Sams Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 3 in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommend for beginners
Review: Although this book is a little outdated,if you are beginner with Boland C++ Builder,this book is just for you.
It provides the fundamentals of C++Builder much enough.
If you finish reading it, I recommend "C++Builder HowTo" as second step.
PS. Day19, which explains DLL, is exceptionally bad, because some sample codes is not able to compile on BCB5.
See "C++ Builder5 Developer's Guide".

Rating:
Summary: poor poor customer service
Review: i placed my order on sep 8th 2002, i have sent them 3 emails to check the status of the order. they have not answered one of them. do not buy anything through bookwizardus, that is my advice. spare yourself a bad experience.

Rating:
Summary: Read the Title
Review: In all fairness, I have the "condensed" 14 day edition of this book that came with BCB3 when I bought it several years ago. The title says it will teach you to use "C++ Builder" in 14 ( 21 ) days, not teach you "C++" in 21 days. If you know the basics of C++, this book will start you making Windows applications with C++ Builder. From the first "hello world" program to beginning database design, you're introduced to many of C++ Builders capabilities. There's lots of example code and quite a few screen shots. After using this book a while you'll need something more advanced no doubt, but this is probably the best place for the beginning BCB user to start.

Rating:
Summary: Read the Title
Review: In all fairness, I have the "condensed" 14 day edition of this book that came with BCB3 when I bought it several years ago. The title says it will teach you to use "C++ Builder" in 14 ( 21 ) days, not teach you "C++" in 21 days. If you know the basics of C++, this book will start you making Windows applications with C++ Builder. From the first "hello world" program to beginning database design, you're introduced to many of C++ Builders capabilities. There's lots of example code and quite a few screen shots. After using this book a while you'll need something more advanced no doubt, but this is probably the best place for the beginning BCB user to start.

Rating:
Summary: Great reading and practical use
Review: No book will be able to cover everything, especially on C++. However, this book is clear, has a fair amount of code and explain some C++ standards. It is a great book for begginers and mid-level programmers and the price is even better; I bought the book for ten dollars more about a year a half ego! I programm is Java1.1, VB6.0, but C++ is the most beautiful and vast language, this book is a good learning tool for it.

Rating:
Summary: Sams Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 3 in 21 Days
Review: Sams Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder 3 in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: Basic book for newbies
Review: This book contains about 200 pages of C++ tutorial, myself, I dont like that stuff repeated in all books I have. The C++ part is always too brief, you have to buy a real C++ book anyway. The rest of the book is explaing very thoroughly how to navigate the menu's in the C++ Builder 3.0 IDE and various settings. Thats good, kind of. But its all in the help files, I think. The book later shows you how to write components, that part is nice to read for the beginner. Then there are some examples of how to do various things but not as many as I would have liked.

The book takes you from the total Builder novice to a level right under newbie Builder programmer. You cant actually code much after reading this book, but you have a very good understanding about the compiler and that helps when you are advancing.

I'd like to compare Builder and conventional compilers with languages like english and german. You learn english by using it, but german by studying it hard, particularly grammar.

What I mean is, get a book containing lots of examples and blaze away. I have looked at all the Builder books on the market. C++ Builder How-to will give you a kickstart. But if you aren't clever enough to learn the Builder interface by using examples and helpfiles, you are better off buying the Teach Yourself book. Or better still, buy both, and you have the dynamic duo. I rate it 4 stars because its so well written and because its the best choice for real newbies.

If Reisdorph would write a "Teach yourself MORE C++ Builder" for intermediate programmers I'm sure it would be a bestseller, cause his books are very well written.

Rating:
Summary: Alright only for beginners
Review: This book is ok for beginners to introduce them to the BCB environment, but it does not teach you the c++ language. It will not take you a long time to learn BCB and after a while you will wonder why you spent so much money for a book that really doesnt teach you that much.

Rating:
Summary: Glosses over important details, dwells on unimportant ones
Review: This book was a very good introduction to the C++ Builder environment. It clearly explained the basic features of C++ Builder, and also had some information on the program's history. Not only was the information in this book helpful for learning C++ Builder 3, but most of the information I learned was also applicable to other Borland programming environments such as Delphi. The only part I didn't like about the book was that the first part was too much devoted to basic C++ programming, which I was already familiar with.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is unfamiliar with Borland tools, or who has never used Delphi or C++ Builder. I would NOT recommend this book to anyone who is familiar with Delphi or VCL (the Visual Component Library). This book seems to be designed primarily for people who have never used the Delphi/C++ Builder environment.

Rating:
Summary: Good content, not enough application
Review: This book was a very good introduction to using Borland C++ Builder 3. It covered the basics of properties, methods, and events in great detail. This book gave very good step by step instructions on how to place components on a form, but did very gave very little information about how to implement them in to your program. This is a great book for a beginner, but if you have used C++ Builder before, you may want to try a more advanced book.