No comments about Delphi: The Official Guide.

3 comments about Using Delphi 2: Special (Using ... (Que)).

1. I have 10 books on Delphi, this is by far the worst. Nothing else even comes close. This book has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I've had it for a year and have yet to find anything useful in it. This was my first Delphi book and I got roped in by all the pretty screen snapshots. Yes, it has a pretty face, but nothing of any substance whatsoever.

   This book is without any depth at all. Pick any topic and it just summarizes what's in the Borland manuals. And it doesn't do a good job at that either.

   The cover has a title saying it's "The Most Complete Reference". I think that must have been a typo. It should have read "The Most InComplete Reference". It also has "Special Edition" on the cover in large italic letters. Lordie! I wonder what the standard edition must have been like.

   It has very very few code examples for you to learn Delphi programming. It goes on chapter after chapter showing you the various windows in the Delphi IDE and a brief summary of what it does.

   The appendix has 167 pages of useless tables that the average person would never use. I suspect they added this in order to make the book look larger than what it really is. You could read this book from cover to cover and I doubt you could learn to program a single thing in Delphi. The only redeeming feature of this book is the CD-Rom which makes for a good coaster for your coffee mug.

   This book will suck an incredible $49.99 (USD) out of your pocket. If you see this book lying on the floor in a book store, don't pick it up. To borrow a line from Monty Python, "Run away! Run away! Run away!"




2. This Book, while covering a lot of ground only touches on each subject. The writing style is very terse, and generally left me more confused about a subject than before I began. In short, I found the delphi manuals more helpful



3. I haven't used this book much so I can't speak for it's overall quality. I would like to point out a significant error in the text which calls that quality into question. On page 363 it is stated that "A custom suppied constructor does not allocate memory" which is false. It also goes on to give an example which uses a constructor just for initializing an already existing object. An ordinary procedure would sufficed for this. In other words the author missed the point of the constructor keyword: it allows for custom methods which both create and initialize objects.

No comments about Essential Delphi 2.0 Fast: How to Develop Applications in Delphi 2.0 (Essential Series).

4 comments about Mastering Delphi 2 for Windows 95.

1. I've tried to learn some computer programing languages by reading books before, but I couldn't finish reading the them (sometimes because they assumed I was some kind of rocket scientist, and sometimes they assumed that I was totaly stupid) . Then I've heard about Delphi 2 everybody told it was very powerfull and easy too, so I've decided that I would try once again to learn something simply by reading a book. So I bought this book and when I've started reading it I saw that it had the right level of information for the begginer and the experient programer.Mastering Delhpi 2 is , by far , the best coputer programing book I've ever read.



2. I wasted my time and money buying OTHER Delphi books (I have 10 Delphi books in total) only to find out they simply regurgitated Borland's reference material or they just skimmed the material.

   Cantu's book is the first and only book that actually teaches you the Delphi language in depth, from scratch. What sets this book apart from the rest are the 250+ code examples that you can experiment with as you read along. This makes the book more interactive and actually makes learning Delphi fun. You learn as you go along which is great at building up confidence when learning a new language. Unlike some "21 day books", these examples are useful and they actually work! The examples are so practical I usually end up implementing the same techniques in my own programs. They're also found on the CD-Rom which makes compiling a snap.

   I've used this book so much, the spine is broken, it's dogeared, full of yellow highlighted text, and it is riddled with tape flags marking the "must read again" portions of the book. The other Delphi books I have are sitting on the shelf, most of them as new as the day I bought them. The reason Cantu's book is so beat up is because I never put it away. It's sitting beside me now, opened in a book stand as I write this. It's 70+ page index makes finding topics easier than any other Delphi book I own. If it's not in the index, then chances are it's not worth knowing.

   Here's the best way to learn Delphi:
   1) Give the programmer the book "Mastering Delphi 2..." by Marco Cantu
   2) Lock the programmer him in a windowless room with a computer
   3) Every day slip a TV dinner under the door
   4) At the end of 2 weeks unlock the door and you'll have yourself a darned good (but smelly) Delphi 2 programmer.
   

   The bottom line is this. If you want to learn Delphi 2, get this book, TODAY! Save your money on those other Delphi books and get yourself some TV dinners instead.

   Barry McClure




3. A very good book for people starting with Delphi 2.0. Everything is described from the ground up, the book has a lot of examples and reads easily. There are also SQL and OOP chapters, which cover standard SQL commands/knowledge and OOP concepts. The poorly organized index (a lot of missing keywords on important subjects) and missing chunks of program code in some examples are serious drawbacks.



4. Nobody will become a Delphi master reading Mastering Delphi 2. In fact, I think that there isn't a book that does this miracle (only experience made us masters).

   But it's still an excellent book. It's funny. It's clear. It covers most Delphi topics: from the simpliest to the most complex.

   Well, some really complex topics (like Delphi's built in assembler) aren't covered, but all I looked for was there.

   Mastering Delphi 2 is not recommendend for begginer programers. The author expects that the reader knows some basic topics about programming (just simple topics like "What are loops?)

   This book is for anyone that already knows something about computer programming and wants to learn a lot about Delphi (including some undecumented tips and "obscure" topics).

5 comments about Delphi 3: User Interface Design.

1. The title is a bit misleading because it covers more than just user interface issues. It is clearly written and covers a reasonable amount of ground not found in other books aimed at either more or less experienced Delphi programmers. I like this book and I'm glad I bought it. I can recommend browsing it to see if it can help you too.



2. Lots of good information, examples and GUI theory and all oriented around Delphi 3. Very effective explanations of and reasons for various ways of presenting data and user controls.



3. I guess the most refreshing thing about this book is that it isn't loaded with fluff. It covers a wide range of design topics that are enforced with working examples that you can put to use immediately. The entire book is on the CD in Adobe Acrobat format, making searches a breeze.



4. The book not only covers issues related to user interface design, but most of it discusses many common programming problems and tasks. The UI sections cover different types of controls and how they can be used to help the user. The remainder, about 2/3 of the book, however is a discussion of some very common problems eg. ensuring only one instance of a program, adding things to the taskbar, talking to the registry, internationalisation, error trapping etc. While the solutions and problems are not "rocket science" they are not the sort of things which can be found in the manuals or the help files. It may not be an "essential" book, but it would be one which you could add to your collection and feel that you have not wasted your money.



5. This is a good Delphi book. It doesn't repeat the Delphi documentation. It really adds code that is worth having and talks about issues related to user interface design. However the book needs to address more issues of the user interface design, so this is not a complete book on interface design. But the author did a good job to start the Delphi beginner programmer like me. I really recommend this book if you are a beginner or intermidate Delphi programmer.

No comments about Delphi 3.0 - Manual Imprescindible.

No comments about DELPHI SELECTS ENCIRQ 3E DB SUITE FOR EMBEDDED SYSTEMS.: An article from: Worldwide Databases.

No comments about SYSTEMS INTEGRATION REPORT: TEKLOGIX INTEGRATES IT AND ERP AT DELPHI AUTOMOTIVE.: An article from: Manufacturing Automation.

No comments about Kahn forms new consumer software firm, 'Starfish,' while Borland intros 'Delphi.' (Philippe Kahn; Starfish Software; Delphi Client Server software): An article from: Software Industry Report.

5 comments about Learn Graphics File Programming With Delphi 3.

1. I picked up this book in the Bargain book bin for $4.99 and paid five times its value. The book is poorly written, filled with errors and the CD ROM would make a good coaster. I gave this book 1 star but a 1/2 star is more appropriate.



2. I bought this book only because I need to try to support the Kodak FlashPix format, and this book happened to have some code related to that format. Unfortunately for me, the code doesn't work. It constantly returns errors and cannot even open the FlashPix pictures that came with the book on the CD. This is the second (and last) worthless computer book I've bought from Wordware. I contacted then to see if maybe there had been an update to fix the bad code on the CD, and they told me they don't support the code contained in their books and that I would have to contact the author.

   One star is the lowest rating Amazon has, so that's what I entered... but it deserves no stars and a whole mess of lemons because that's what this book is.




3. This is BY FAR the worst computer related book I have ever touched. I seriously doubt that the Author even knew what he was doing when he decided to write this book. I purchased this book a while ago, and after trying to create working examples from his bug ridden code I became so distraught that I used this utterly worthless book for firewood. I have never seen anything like this before. Even books written by college professors for use with only thier classes have less errors and those books often have several pages missing and thousands of typos. So, if you are even considering buying this book, then do everyone a favor and DO NOT buy this failer of a book. Hopefully the author will lose money by writting books and as a result be forced to give up writing, which will be beneficial for everyone.



4. 0 Stars. I contacted the publisher who suggested I work with them to fix the code. Apparently others had already complained. As noted in other reviews, neither the code in the book or the code on the CD work. In fact, the code is so terribly incomplete I am surprised any other users actually found bugs. It's hard to have a bug when the code to read or write a particular format is nothing more than a skeleton of the required code. I contacted the author, back when the book was published, and he insisted he'd update the code to work. Subsequently, he seems to have gone into hiding. I don't blame him.



5. This book uses incredibly outdated and antiquated technology. He still uses far pointers, an artifact of 16-bit Windows 3.1 that disappeared 12 years ago with Windows 95, which itself is antiquated! Nobody programs like this anymore in 2008 (or even in 1998!).
   
   I find the chapter "What's not in this book", where he rants about redundant discussions that typify other programming books, to be mildly amusing and I read it from time to time just to get a laugh. Other than that the book is a shelf decoration.