Charlie Calvert's Delphi 4 Unleashed [Paperback]

Charles Calvert (Author)

Book Description

Series: Unleashed | Publication Date: November 1998

A complete high-end reference for programmers and developers in Borland's June 98 release of Delphi 4. Topics covered include: building and integrating components with Java and Active X; Internet and Intranet enabling applications; client/server architecture and enterprise wide development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1152 pages
• Publisher: Sams Publishing (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672312859
• ISBN-13: 978-0672312854
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,254,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Borland Delphi

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Serious Developers and wannabees -- Get this Book, June 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Charlie Calvert's Delphi 4 Unleashed (Paperback)

Charlie Calvert is a great writer, a fun philosopher, but most important he knows his stuff. Delphi 4 is a powerful but easy to use visual development tool, and covering it in one book is ambitious but Calvert succeeds. The book is well written(although Calvert can be a bit wordy), and covers such timely and important topics as Creating Components, COM,Internet Programming and,Distributed programming(several chapters) *and* Game programming. This helps put the lie to Delphi's image a mainly a database development tool.

I stopped a 4 stars because major portions(six chapters) of the book are on CD in Acrobat format. I detest reading acrobat documents. I would prefer Calvert cut down on the size of the code samples and cut down some of the wordiness to fit those electronic chapters in the book. Or add another $5 to the price and make the book fatter.

Publishers must know that reading a book at a computer screen is be difficult. Just try relaxing on your couch or riding the subway while reading your PC. Let's just hope this text on CD business is not a trend.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Potential, will suit some, best for advanced users, July 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Charlie Calvert's Delphi 4 Unleashed (Paperback)

Charlie is an extremely engaging writer in many ways. His philosophy of programming is great reading, and the book simply covers areas (such as Corba programming) that other books do not. For this reason alone, it will be valuable to many.

The book is not a reference book, and in fact assumes a lot is already known by the reader. It is 'pitched' at the experienced intermediate-advanced reader, and in many respects is quite terse.

If you are a programmer interested in advanced topics, the book will likely be invaluable. If you are a beginner get Kent Reisdorph's 'Teach yourself Delphi 4 (+x) in 21 days' before moving on to the extremely useful Delphi 4 (+x) Developers Guide or Marco Cantu's 'Mastering Delphi 4 (+x)'.

Having said all that, it's a useful addition to your bookshelf after the other books, and another perspective which cannot hurt.

If you are on the cutting edge and know Delphi though, you may find this one of the top books around.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a reference, a wonderful book, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Charlie Calvert's Delphi 4 Unleashed (Paperback)

OK, tell the truth now - how many computer books do you have on your bookshelf that you DON'T read? I mean perfectly good books that are for some reason almost perfectly useless?

Charlie Calvert may not write the most spartan and pointed reference books, but he does offer carefully written prose that many enjoy reading, and hence will read. What is more useful? a detailed and encyclopedic reference, that tries to beat the on-line help and manuals (and whose index you search in vain twice a year), or something that you will *actually read*, savor, and might remember a bit of?

The truth of the matter is that no single book on any programming environment can cover it all, but if you are a pretty hip Delphi user, and you know you don't know everything, you will enjoy a slow read of Calvert's book, a chapter here and there, with an iced tea in the shade this summer, and find out why Charlie is so well-liked. He comes across like the older programmer that will show you a trick or two about the craft.

There are some down sides to this 1100 page tome. In almost all computer books these days, the index is ridiculously underpowered, say by a factor of 4 to 1, and Delphi 4 Unleashed is no exception. It's hard to understand why. Hey, if their indexes were better, some of the shelfware books might be useful, like looking up an example when you're desperate.

The trend towards putting selected chapters only on the CD is unacceptable. The Adobe Acrobat reader is an ABYSMAL program, and all this defeats the purpose of having a book. I loved having a WHOLE book in BOTH paper and searchable Windows Help format, like Blaszczak's MFC book, but the paper/Acrobat hybrid is a loser. I don't care what they have to do, thinner paper, limiting the scope, but I DON'T WANT parts of my books missing from the book. I will never read these chapters, and I feel cheated.

As things stand, be glad Calvert's stuff that you will read is a pleasure, and very valuable. And it is.