Customer Reviews

C++Builder 5 Developer's Guide

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, there are two things that would have made this book better. Not putting any chapters on the CD (and lose a lot of value), and make it a hardcover instead of the flimsy glue-back binding. I like my textbooks to be strong and able to fold out on a desk and not bend permanently. This one as thick as it is really should be a hardcover.

On to more important things...

The content is excellent. A lot of possible space wasting images have been left out which leaves a lot more information. There are plenty of images to get the point across. It starts out with chapters explaining the more simple features and ending with OpenGL & DirectX, and Creating Help Files. The contained CD is excellent and makes a great example for other authors to go by. The installation program actually works! Source code, 3rd party programs, 60 day trial of C++Builder 5, components, and other goodies are included on the CD.

The Debugging Applications chapter is one I plan on spending a lot of time with. It includes great pictures and explanations galore of Builder's debug window setup.

The layout as well as overall content is what is to be expected of a Developers Guide. I own hundreds of technical books and this one is right up there with my best ones! This team of authors did a great job of combining skills.

OK, so there haven't been a lot of them. Nevertheless, this one will be tough to beat. I just got the book and have already found several topics that simply aren't covered (or covered well) in other tomes. The chapters on compiling/optimizing, debugging, and DLLs and Plug-Ins alone are worth the price of the book. The chapters on COM/DCOM are a tad short, but not the worst I've seen. I am also pleased with the chapter on Microsoft Office integration. The early chapters on programming with C++ Builder 5 and user interface principles were also excellent. All in all, I'm glad I got it "hot off the presses" and I'm sure I'll get plenty of wear and tear out of it before too long. A satisfying purchase. :)

This book starts where all others end. Imagine a book about C++ where operator overloading is at page 40! Normally, books about programming starts with a brief introduction about object-oriented development, and some about the language itself. However, in this book, the author starts from the point that you're a master in C++, you know everything abou classes, instantiation, constructors, destructors, virtual functions, operator and function overloading and overriding, and so forth.
Due to this, it's an excellent book for programmers who knows C++ and need to know more about C++ Builder tool, and how to extract the maximum power of this tool to implement professional resources in their applications. However, if you're a dummy in C++ (as dummy as me!), don't buy this book before reading a good C++ basics title. Learn C++ before buy!

Yes, the PDF file is lacking significantly. Unfortunately thenavigational pane and links were overlooked in the first edition andwe were all disappointed.

The second print run should begin in thenext few weeks or so and the PDF file will be fixed. The new PDF filewill include a TOC with links in the navigation pane and links fromthe index, making it much more useful (no more guessing the pagenumber or searching!)...

In addition to the PDF file there are anumber of technical corrections that have been made...

This is the only C++ Builder 5 book available in book stores. Fortunately, it is a GREAT book. It covers the topics (see Table of Contents by clicking on the hyperlink) well.

As pointed out, the PDF file could be improved. Certainly if hyperlinks are included would make it easier and more practical for the reader.

As for some chapters being available only on the CD-ROM, I would say that it is a matter of personal preference. Would you mind buying another book or just leave it as chapters on the CD-ROM? But it is great stuff and I personally find it easily to look for stuff printed in book form rather on CD-ROM.

If you are using C++ Builder 5, you will find this book useful.

I don't do a lot of programming so I was able to put off buying this book until just recently. I've been so pleased with it that I know now I should have bought it long ago. It's very well written and full of hands-on real world examples. Reading and understanding the Authors is very uncomplicated. They take you from VCL basics to serious in-depth development quickly with articulate facundity. I've found the chapter on Windows API programming to be especially benefecial. If you do any programming with CPP Builder you're unlikely to get very far without this book. Also worth mentioning, I've found most of this book to be an excellent reference for earlier versions including CPP Builder 3 as well.

I found the complaints about the chapters on CD-ROM to have no real merit. The chapters on the CD could easily have made up another volume to be purchased seperately. I consider it something extra. The book contains almost 1400 pages of excellent documentation and reference text and on it's own measure earns a 5 star rating.

This is very useful raw material, full of very hands-on examples and advice, and thus valuable to a 5 star level, but the CD-only chapters are a serious problem. The problem is not just that the printed version is missing so much stuff, and that the paperback is unwieldy anyway, it's that the whole approach to the "fat book" issue is idiotic. PDF is an irritating format to begin with, but I have run into some annotated and indexed PDF files that are searchable and user-friendly, so it can be done. Yet nothing of the sort is true here, no effort was wasted on this puppy! You end up with a partial print book and a completely separate plain PDF file of the full book. Of course you discover entirely different page numbers in the printed and the on-CD PDF versions. Then, in addition, in Acrobat the page numbers shown on-screen don't match the numbers in the goto bar (you have to keep adding an offset of 42 pages), plus the PDF file has no hot links, not even the chapter headings, there is no search index, so it's about as dead a PDF as you can get. It's so disappointing that you can seldom find the examples that are there and that you need without a major hunt using a slow string search tool. The most practical ways to use this book are to either read whole sections and remember them, or open it at random and look around. The failure-to-use-available-technology factor is an insult to everyone involved. For all of the work the writers put into it -and this IS by far the best BCB material on the market- hopefully next time they will choose a publisher who gives a hoot.

This book is a very good one. Its biggest problem is the "CD-ROM-only" chapters. Another problem: I didn't like that the first five chapters are for beginners only, but anyway they're ok.

The chapters that I've found more useful to my daily job were those of Part III (Interfaces and Distributed Computing). For example, the COM chapter has a lot of useful information, in spite of its short length and its style -which I find abrupt and weird. The chapter about DCOM is very short too, but it is well structured and contains valuable tips and advises. Finally, the MIDAS chapter is one of the bests. It helped me to understand the new features this technology offers. Nice job, Bob!

But the chapter that was the most useful to me and my team was the chapter 18 (COM+). It deserves special attention. I can't understand why it goes in the CD-ROM, with the bunch of useful information about COM+ it has. Sure, it seems to have several typos -I think that its author was the same guy that wrote the COM chapter- but if you are a C++Builder developer and want to do COM+, you won't survive without it. This chapter has given me many elements that are missed from the most of the material I've read so far about the subject. Although it's too much low-level oriented, chapter 18 is a must-have for any COM+ developer. I'd say that this chapter would deserve the book's price, if printed.

The chapter about image processing, although not in my field, is very well written and interesting.

I would like to thank every author for this great job. Sure the book is not perfect, but it deserves its five stars!

I have been looking around for C++ Builder 5 books and only managed to find this book. It is well-written but certain chapters are on the CD-ROM instead of being printed which I find very inconvenient.

Well, seeing as this is pretty much the only book on C++Builder 5, I guess that goes without saying.

However, even if there were other books, I think this one would still be the best. Every chapter is focused on a specific task and has a lot of good information regarding the task.

I recommend this book to anyone who works with C++Builder or would like to but doesn't know where to start.