Customer Reviews

Mastering Delphi 2 for Windows 95

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3 star:		(1)
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Nobody will become a Delphi master reading Mastering Delphi 2. In fact, I think that there isn't a book that does this miracle (only experience made us masters).

But it's still an excellent book. It's funny. It's clear. It covers most Delphi topics: from the simpliest to the most complex.

Well, some really complex topics (like Delphi's built in assembler) aren't covered, but all I looked for was there.

Mastering Delphi 2 is not recommendend for begginer programers. The author expects that the reader knows some basic topics about programming (just simple topics like "What are loops?)

This book is for anyone that already knows something about computer programming and wants to learn a lot about Delphi (including some undecumented tips and "obscure" topics).

A very good book for people starting with Delphi 2.0. Everything is described from the ground up, the book has a lot of examples and reads easily. There are also SQL and OOP chapters, which cover standard SQL commands/knowledge and OOP concepts. The poorly organized index (a lot of missing keywords on important subjects) and missing chunks of program code in some examples are serious drawbacks.

I wasted my time and money buying OTHER Delphi books (I have 10 Delphi books in total) only to find out they simply regurgitated Borland's reference material or they just skimmed the material.

Cantu's book is the first and only book that actually teaches you the Delphi language in depth, from scratch. What sets this book apart from the rest are the 250+ code examples that you can experiment with as you read along. This makes the book more interactive and actually makes learning Delphi fun. You learn as you go along which is great at building up confidence when learning a new language. Unlike some "21 day books", these examples are useful and they actually work! The examples are so practical I usually end up implementing the same techniques in my own programs. They're also found on the CD-Rom which makes compiling a snap.

I've used this book so much, the spine is broken, it's dogeared, full of yellow highlighted text, and it is riddled with tape flags marking the "must read again" portions of the book. The other Delphi books I have are sitting on the shelf, most of them as new as the day I bought them. The reason Cantu's book is so beat up is because I never put it away. It's sitting beside me now, opened in a book stand as I write this. It's 70+ page index makes finding topics easier than any other Delphi book I own. If it's not in the index, then chances are it's not worth knowing.

Here's the best way to learn Delphi:
1) Give the programmer the book "Mastering Delphi 2..." by Marco Cantu
2) Lock the programmer him in a windowless room with a computer
3) Every day slip a TV dinner under the door
4) At the end of 2 weeks unlock the door and you'll have yourself a darned good (but smelly) Delphi 2 programmer.<g>

The bottom line is this. If you want to learn Delphi 2, get this book, TODAY! Save your money on those other Delphi books and get yourself some TV dinners instead.<g>

Barry McClure

I've tried to learn some computer programing languages by reading books before, but I couldn't finish reading the them (sometimes because they assumed I was some kind of rocket scientist, and sometimes they assumed that I was totaly stupid) . Then I've heard about Delphi 2 everybody told it was very powerfull and easy too, so I've decided that I would try once again to learn something simply by reading a book. So I bought this book and when I've started reading it I saw that it had the right level of information for the begginer and the experient programer.Mastering Delhpi 2 is , by far , the best coputer programing book I've ever read.