Sams Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 4 in 24 Hours

Rating:
Summary: Very good for beginners (English and Portuguese)
Review: English: This kind of book (teach yourself in 24 hours, 21 days , etc) always have been suspect for me. But Kent Reisdorph's "Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 4 in 24 Hours" is a very good publication, specially for beginner/intermediate level. It starts with an explanation about C language, then goes to OOP and C++ and finally covers C++ Builder 4, always well-explained. Kent is also a member of TeamB, Borland's online volunteer support group. It really worths its price !

Portuguese: Apesar do nome gerar suspeitas (sempre desconfiei de títulos aprenda em 21 dias ou 24 horas), é um livro muito bom. Começa com uma visão geral da linguagem C, depois entra no C++ com todos os conceitos de OOP e depois entra no Builder 4. Na realidade são 24 capítulos que o autor chamou de 24 horas. É o mesmo autor de C++ Builder Unleashed(este é um livro para nível mais avançado) e faz parte do TeamB da Borland. Este livro vem ainda com um CD com todos os exemplos e um trial do Builder 4 por 60 dias

Rating:
Summary: Very good for beginners (English and Portuguese)
Review: English: This kind of book (teach yourself in 24 hours, 21 days , etc) always have been suspect for me. But Kent Reisdorph's "Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 4 in 24 Hours" is a very good publication, specially for beginner/intermediate level. It starts with an explanation about C language, then goes to OOP and C++ and finally covers C++ Builder 4, always well-explained. Kent is also a member of TeamB, Borland's online volunteer support group. It really worths its price !

Portuguese: Apesar do nome gerar suspeitas (sempre desconfiei de títulos aprenda em 21 dias ou 24 horas), é um livro muito bom. Começa com uma visão geral da linguagem C, depois entra no C++ com todos os conceitos de OOP e depois entra no Builder 4. Na realidade são 24 capítulos que o autor chamou de 24 horas. É o mesmo autor de C++ Builder Unleashed(este é um livro para nível mais avançado) e faz parte do TeamB da Borland. Este livro vem ainda com um CD com todos os exemplos e um trial do Builder 4 por 60 dias

Rating:
Summary: Very good for beginners (English and Portuguese)
Review: English: This kind of book (teach yourself in 24 hours, 21 days , etc) always have been suspect for me. But Kent Reisdorph's "Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 4 in 24 Hours" is a very good publication, specially for beginner/intermediate level. It starts with an explanation about C language, then goes to OOP and C++ and finally covers C++ Builder 4, always well-explained. Kent is also a member of TeamB, Borland's online volunteer support group. It really worths its price !

Portuguese: Apesar do nome gerar suspeitas (sempre desconfiei de títulos aprenda em 21 dias ou 24 horas), é um livro muito bom. Começa com uma visão geral da linguagem C, depois entra no C++ com todos os conceitos de OOP e depois entra no Builder 4. Na realidade são 24 capítulos que o autor chamou de 24 horas. É o mesmo autor de C++ Builder Unleashed(este é um livro para nível mais avançado) e faz parte do TeamB da Borland. Este livro vem ainda com um CD com todos os exemplos e um trial do Builder 4 por 60 dias

Rating:
Summary: Don't leave MS VC++ without it!
Review: Excellent intro to C++Builder. Thorough, patient, well-paced, informative. Required if you are a newbie to Builder. I used it to learn the new Builder 5.0 and found no problems. (A small part of this book is an intro to C++. It is too small -- but that's okay. There are plenty of good books out there on C++. I like Herb Schildt's work.)

Rating:
Summary: Too much C++ and not enough builder
Review: I bought this book to get an introduction to Windows development using Borland Builder 4.

Now, I must say that if a person knows little C/C++ then this book is good bacause it leans towards teaching basics of this first.

However, for someone that is not new to C/C++ there are a lot of pages to jump over. Then there is not enough builder. You get the basics, enough to get started but...

In conclusion a good book if beginning to program in C/C++ but not really for the advanced.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth reading
Review: I felt very disappointed after reading this book. It paid very little attention to explaining how to use the Tform class which is one of the most important elements of the Borland C++ Builder.

Rating:
Summary: the one guide into C++ Builder
Review: If learning how to use the C++ builder is your task, this is the right book for you! It's concise, deep and fun to read!

Rating:
Summary: the one guide into C++ Builder
Review: If learning how to use the C++ builder is your task, this is the right book for you! It's concise, deep and fun to read!

Rating:
Summary: Great book to start with
Review: In the beginning of the book, Chaper 1-7, the author starts with teaching C++ in a CONSOLE APPLICATION. This is really great, because when I want to learn to program, I don't want to place all kinds of objects on a form and customize those. Instead, I just want to see all plain text in one view. This section of the book I find very brilliantly written: exactly my level of depth I want to read in a starters book, without too-exhaustive examples.

From chapter 8 on, the 'Builder' environment is described. I like best reading this part before sleeping or when travelling: Because I find the Builder environment so intuitive, it is in my opinion not needed to explain all 'obvious' stuff. But I guess for people not familiar with a Windows environment, this will be a great help. But for me, I only read it for those 'magical' lines of code (like how to read a line from a Memo component, which I found very hard to find out alone).

Chapter 20 is filled handy 'programming tips', like the use of 'ALT-[' or 'ALT-]' to find corresponding curly brackets.

Chapter 23 is about the debugger, which was also a need-to-read section for me.

Concluding, I find the book superficial in its most positive sense: it describes what a beginning programmer needs to know to start with, without going into not-needed details or falling into exhaustive examples. It gives you all you need to know to start with.

Rating:
Summary: Addition to the July 9, 2000 review
Review: This book is a good introduction to using Borland Builder 4, and it comes with a 60-day trial version of the program. But it contains some flaws. Some of the step-by-step instructions are incorrect or missing. And the sections on Visual Components and Window controls go into great detail about what these components and controls do, but does not give any instructions/examples about how to use them in a program.

I actually found that the Borland C++ Builder 3 for DUMMIES by Jason Vokes to be much better in showing how to use Visual Components and Window Controls in programs.

Neither the Borland Builder in 24 Hours nor the Borland C++ Builder 3 for DUMMIES is perfect, but together these two books provide a good introduction to using Borland Builder.

You can use the Borland Builder 4 in 24 Hours as a guide to building simple, single document or multiple document interface Window programs.

And then you can use the Borland C++ Builder 3 for DUMMIES for more instructions/examples or how to use various Visual Components and Window controls in your programs.

The book shows how to use the following components: label, editbox, panel, memo, combobox, buttons, maskedit, shape, grid, imagelist, listview and treeview, dialog boxes, and etc.

The DUMMIES book also has chapters on debugging, C++ exceptions and database programming (you would need the Professional version of Borland Builder to do database programming; this version has the database components needed to create programs that can access databases).