Customer Reviews

Delphi 5 Developer's Guide (Developer's Guide)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Ok, first things First. Click The Buy Button and come back and read this review. You simply cannot go wrong with this book. Previously I had brought Mastering Delphi 3 & 5 and thought they were good (which they are), but sorry Marco, the best delphi book mantle has been past on.

Ok, D5 Developer's Guide. What this book doesn't cover isn't worth knowing. A brief contents listing... * History Of Delphi (Interesting Read) * Object Pascal Language Overview (For the newbies) * Win32 API overview (and yes, you do need to deal with the API from time to time) * Coding Standards (I mean, this book even tells you how you should write the code! ) * Using ActiveX Controls * Graphics Programming * DLLs * Printing * Multithreading * Help with Porting your apps to Delphi 5 (And we are only half way through the book) * Writing your own components (400 pages to this alone) * Database Development (Desktop, Client Server, Midas and Corba) (4 Chapters)

Over 1500 pages of information. What with this book, the two Tomes Of Delphi, Win32Api references and Mastering Delphi 5, there should be enough information there to make a Guru out of a first year college student. Seriously, I cannot rate this book high enough. Don't worry about it not being worth the money - it is. Every Penny.

The only problem with this book is that some of the chapters are on the CDROM (however, they are the ones that you might want to read once in a while) and that you might pull your back picking the book up. (Just remember the correct lifting stance).

I recieved it within one week. I've been a Delphli developer since D1, but since my usual work requires a narrow focus on projects of similar type, I've not been exposed to all the "acronyms of the day". I needed a book that would spell out, in recipe format, HOW to get into MIDAS, and Web enablment. This book reaches it's target audience very well. It catches the developer up on the new syntax available, tells 'beginer' developers where more info is available, and for experienced developers it SPELLS OUT step by step HOW to get MIDAS and Web enablement going. Some of the chapters are written by other authors besides Steve and Xavier, but the format of each chapter is consistent. JOB WELL DONE!

As an example, I learned this from the book:

D1 Syntax:

S := Table1.FieldByName('EmpNo').AsString;

D5 Syntax:

S := Table1['EmpNo'];

I skipped D4 because it was a bag of bugs. I told the Delphi development team not to 'do that again' at BorCon/INPR Conference '99. D5 is a SOLID product Borland can be proud of, and Delphi 5 Developer's Guide is a SOLID BOOK, the authors can be proud of! It's about 8 pounds, not including the chapters that are on the CD only.

It also has a beautiful cover and because it's so big, it makes me look real important while I walk around the office reading it. Ha ha ha! Plus I'm actually getting what look like small BICEPTS from holding it up while I read. COOL!

BUY THIS BOOK! It's a WINNER!

Kev.

Hey, BTW, Teixeira, Pacheco, are those Spanish names? Portugese? They sound cool.

This book contains a lot of technical and undocumented information about Delphi programming, the IDE, components, etc. Not written for the novice but it does compliment Marco Cantu's "Mastering Delphi 5". I highly recommend it. Only "drawback" is the chapters on the CD. I certainly understand wanting to keep the physical size of the book down but it does make it hard to read in bed (monitor takes up a lot of room). All kidding aside, you can't go wrong purchasing this title.

Although this book in immense and contains many, many chapters, I found some issues that greatly concern me. I've been programming in Delphi since 1.0, and it is very obvious that this book is an update from previous versions of Delphi, not one written specifically for Delphi 5...

I found a chapter that explains how to use a VCL interface unit that is no longer available in Delphi 5, but was in all previous versions. The book explains how to use features that the Delphi 5 readme files tell you that you can no longer use... I think the authors should have spent more time ensuring that they were providing accurate information to the development community.

Also, their chapters on the internet features of Delphi 5 are short and shallow. Who out there today does not want to take full advantage of the internet when writing code? And Delphi's embedded TWebBrowser object ( an api wrapper around IE ) is a powerful object that allowed me to embed a browser inside my application. This object is not ever mentioned within the book.

My overall impression is that it was simply an update from a previous book, and more attention should have been paid to the actual workings of Delphi 5 specifically.

The problems with this book are many. First and foremost, it's mostly just a rehash of the D4 book of the same title. I bought the book looking for all the nifty new stuff in D5 to be covered and was sorely disappointed. Where's the IE wrapper component? Where are the new COM servers? This is obviously just a minimal update of the D4 book. Second, this book is physically too large. I'm not impressed by 1500p book that's half-filled with screen shots, chapter summaries and the like. This book resulted in enough trees deaths to deserve a GreenPeace alert. C'mon, is all this really necessary?

Bottom line: if you have the D4 book, you already have this one. Save your money.

I have programmed in pascal before and thought I could walk into Delphi but not with this book. This book is for intermediate to advanced users, make sure you have had plenty of experience with Delphi IDE before starting.

Couple of things to note

1. Six chapters are in PDF format on the CD, (You can download printable versions from the website) It keeps the price down, and no important information was cut out to make room in the book. Go to a copy centre and get the PDF printed, it saves a lot of hassle.

2. Not sure what I was getting into I decided to purchase the Standard version of Delphi. Bad Decision, everything in this book is tailored towards the Professional Version of Delphi

3. There is a 2 Month Delphi Enterprise Trial version available for download on the borland/ inprise website. Great Stuff

I was very dissapointed to see that it is almost the same material as in the older Delphi Developers Guide's. Of course there are new chapters, but the biggest part of the book is just transciption of the older ones...

Don't misunderstand me - It IS a great book, but if you already have any one Delphi X Developers Guide you can jump over it...

Steve and Xavier have done it again. What an impressive piece of work. The new MIDAS and CORBA chapters are the best there is on the subjects. The COM chapters are... (what can I say, Steve implemented most of the COM architecture in Delphi the product). Great Job guys! Steve, X, Dan"Mr.MIDAS" and Lance"Mr.Corba".

I have been programming Delphi since D1 and have bought over 50 Delphi books over the years, some I am embarrassed to own. This book is without question, the highest quality Delphi book to hit print to date. Not for beginners but intermediate or better Delphi programmers will find this book to be an essential reference. The sample code actually works! I would have paid twice as much for a two volume set rather then have the CD chapters, however.

This book had a lot of useful information, but the formatting and the usage of the companion CD drove me crazy. Here is and example: I'm reading along and I finish chapter 5 only to find chapter 6, 7, and 8 are on the companion CD. For now I skip them, and go on to chapter 9. When I'm finished with that I find that chapter 10 is on the companion CD and it has all of the coverage on printing (one of the subjects I need), so I open the CD and start reading chapter 10. This is something like 54 pages, and it has some good subject matter. I decide to print a couple of the pages only to find that they have their security setting set so you can't print ANY of the book chapters (or highlight, so you can't copy and paste items). In all, the companion CD contains 447 pages of non-printable text from random parts of the book. If any subject interests you all you can do is write a note as to the page number and location on the CD, nothing else is allowed. I found it very hard to read an electronic page or two and then try an example and keep on flipping back and forth electronically. If this doesn't bother you then this may just be the book for you. I felt the information was good, but a book that can't be put on paper isn't for me.