Rating: 
Summary: Great for beginning. The delphi help does the rest
Review: I have been programming in Delphi for a year and a half now. I started out with really bad books and the quirky Borland manual. I snagged the book the moment it came out. The book does very well in the explaining department. The IDE is explained very well and so are OOP fundamentals. After you finish the book, the VCL help (F1) should be enough. When you want to jump to windows API programming, the win32.hlp is an excellent (free) tool. I really recommend this book if you are just starting off, with a wee bit of programming knowledge.
Rating: 
Summary: Wheres the CD!
Review: I have found Sams books to be very infomative in any computer language that I'm interested in BUT, there all useless without the CD! Trying to download from their web page seems a little difficult too. Good Luck.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book!
Review: I loved this book! It could of been more thorough about the actuall lannguage and leave the tool functions alone! Its surprisingly easy (Just Like VB!) and very basic. I thought since major developers used it it would be harder. Well, just want to tell all that have not bought it yet and want to program- Dont, start with VB! But if your a serious programmer who doesn't mind spending 21 hours strait infront of a computer (thats me!) BYE THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I programmed with Delphi 3, then got a job with a Visual Basic shop, that now wants me to use Delphi, this book was a great refresher and in every chapter I learned something new. I love the fact that it is 'quick' and the examples make sence and work!
Rating:
Summary: Very good introduction to using Delphi 4 (and 5)
Review: I purchased Delphi 5, and also the Developers Guide - but found it difficult to actually program in Delphi. I have a very strong programming background in procedural languages, but not in C or C++ or any other OO paradigm, and the Delphi manual and Delphi 5 Developers guide are far too advanced for beginners. This book was very easy for me to understand, and although I think that the subject matter simply cannot be mastered in 21 days this was the only book that was able to explain many of the reasons why (and how) you would use the different VCL components. Although there are many cases where more complex examples would have helped, I think that it was appropriate for the author to ignore them. This is obviously a beginners book. I would have preffered some more details on some of the more "odd" language features such as the typecasting, the use of "AS" and "IS", peculiarities of creating classes, etc, as well as some more info on the Object Pascal language and some programing conventions that may help to reduce coding errors - the syntax is particularly odd in its use of semi-colons, a fact that Borland admits in its own documentation as one of the prime reasons for intorduction of program 'bugs'.One of the nice features of the book is the end of chapter tutorials. I did them and found the they did re-inforce the chapters, and also provided additional stimulus. You are encouraged to use the on-line help, and it does help. There is no way to progrm in Delphi without it. In order to really follow along you must interact with the software. The book does not come with a CD, you must download sample code from the Internet, which is a bit of a bother. In summary a very good book. The examples and text work for Delphi 5 as well as Delphi 4. I think that any beginning Delphi programmer should have this plus an advanced book, and they should be ready to take on most projects.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid Teaching Aid - but be prepared
Review: I purchased this book, without having any background in programming in any computer language, except a small amount of Basic & HTML, hoping for fast results. The truth is that although the book is comprehensive and user friendly, it relys heavily on a pre existing knowledge of the subject matter and is really NOT for the absolute beginner. My only other observation would be the constant "I'll cover that part later" aspect of the text, which is very frustrating, and makes the reader want to skip ahead to consolidate learning. I would certainly recommend this book, but only as an addition to the library of someone who knew a great deal about Delphi first, without which 21 days is optomistic at best!
Rating:
Summary: Solid Teaching Aid - but be prepared
Review: I purchased this book, without having any background in programming in any computer language, except a small amount of Basic & HTML, hoping for fast results. The truth is that although the book is comprehensive and user friendly, it relys heavily on a pre existing knowledge of the subject matter and is really NOT for the absolute beginner. My only other observation would be the constant "I'll cover that part later" aspect of the text, which is very frustrating, and makes the reader want to skip ahead to consolidate learning. I would certainly recommend this book, but only as an addition to the library of someone who knew a great deal about Delphi first, without which 21 days is optomistic at best!
Rating:
Summary: Could Have Been Better
Review: I thought the book was great for showing you how to manage your way through the Delphi IDE, but as far as coding in Object Pascal i think it lacks considerably. I was looking forward to learning the language more than using the IDE. If anyone knows a good beginners book for Delphi 4 with a stronger focus on Object Pascal PLEASE e mail me. subzerokx@aol.com
Rating:
Summary: Good guide to IDE
Review: I used this book as my introduction to Delphi and found it useful, but less than ideal. The early chapters of the book gave a good introduction to the basics of Delphi programming, and in particular the many tricks which Delphi has to make programming easier. If all you intend to do is produce a program to present databases in a particular way this book will probably meet your needs fine. My reservations relate to the presentation of information about the language itself. The explanation of the various features of classes seemed sketchy, and left me unsure of when I should use what sort of features. I had hoped that the chapter on "Advanced programming techniques" would help, but this focused on elements which "polish" a programme, but don't bridge the gap to a finished application of any real complexity. I didn't bother finishing the last few chapters on matters such as producing components and DLLs as I felt I needed to learn more about classes, properties and datastreams before I would benefit.
Rating:
Summary: This book is just what I was wanting.
Review: I was pleasantly surprised the author wasted no time inteaching the fundamentals of Object Pascal. Instead of making you gothrough 5 chapters just to learn about 2 or 3 topics, he hits you with it at a pretty quick pace. This book includes almost everything in Delphi, except for some advanced topics, etc. I'm overall very impressed. The only reason I gave the book 4 stars is because it is somewhat misleading about who the book is for. It says it assumes no prior programming experience but, in my opinion you'd have much more of an advantage in reading this book by knowing some basic programming concepts & terminology. To make a long story short, I do not regret the money I spent on this book. Thank you.
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