Customer Reviews

Mastering Delphi 4

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book does an excellent job of walking the user through all the basics of Delphi and Object Pascal. It does assume some familiarity with Pascal, but if the reader has that, this is an extremely easy to follow book. The examples are useful, and are explained well enough that the reader can easily expand them to meet his own needs

As someone who knew all about the concepts of OOP from a C++ perspective, and was new to world of Delphi, this book was fantastic value. It showed me how to get things done, and how OOP works with Delphi... now I think Delphi is fantastic. I read the first few chapters before attempting anything in Delphi and now that I have started programming in it, use the book as my first reference. Thank you Marco!

I'm seriously considering writing my own book on programming, since there is a huge hole to be filled. From what I've seen the majority of books cater to advanced programmers, which is unfair and unfortunate. You can't start in the deep end. It's also like that in other fields as well. If you are new to Delphi don't buy this book, you won't derive much from it. The topics covered obviously deal with more advanced issues. Sharp looking cover though.

A useful compilation especially of tips and tricks, but arguably not comprehensive enough in either scope or depth. Don't think that buying this book will let you off reading the Delphi help files, or looking elsewhere for basic reference material.

I've been programming in Delphi for the past couple of years, and found that "Mastering" series from Cantu are most complete. The book contains many usefull information about almost anything you may need to develop professional applications in Delphi 4.

This is a fantastic work. Cantu has an excellent summary of the new language features added to Delphi 4, and notes pitfalls which may occur when compiling old code.

I generally only refer to books when I'm stuck and need help beyond the online docs. I can sit down and just read this one; there's so much useful information in it that I always find something helpful.

It's hard for me to say who this book is for. If I had to guess, I'd say it's for the dedicated intermediate to advanced Delphi programmer with lots of time on his hands. At over 1000 pages, it's going to take some time to get through it. Worse, since the writing style is not consistent, it's hard to get into the rhythm of the book. With a good programming book, I know what I'm getting, so I can skim through sections that I get right away, and read more deeply through tough topics. This book is patchy, if you don't read it carefully, you'll miss things. It's also not a book for beginners. It expects you to be proficient in the Delphi IDE and Object Pascal. In that respect it would also not be a good reference, since there's not even a short chapter with Pascal basics. Although I can't speak for expert programmers, I bet they'd have a hard time liking this book, there's too much style that experts would find fault with, and as others have pointed out, it is not complete on advanced topics. I'm not sure why I'm giving it a 2, perhaps I'm being generous in the hope that I will read it again and find some hidden treasure.

This is the most comprehensive and useful book on Delphi 4 programming that I have come across (and I've browsed ALL the books on D4 that Amazon list).

The only reason I do not rate it at 5 stars is the fact that the code in the book is not included on a CD-ROM; you have to download it from the web. Give me a CD any day.

For Bob Swart to review a book highly should be enough for any aspiring Delphi programmer, but I'll add my voice in saying this is another great book from Marco. Unlike other version books, Marco uses tons of new examples and avoids simply providing an updated version of his previous work. Much of the beginning material in MD3 had to do with object pascal and you won't go wrong buying both MD3 and 4 if you need the background. Great book.

I had a chance to skim this book over several hours. I have experience with VB6 and wanted to understand what Delphi has to offer. There was some good discussion on the oo aspects of Delphi that appear to be superior to VB. There was also a good section on internet development and Active X control use. It gave me an unbiased point of comparison between VB and Delphi products.