Customer Reviews

Special Edition Using Delphi 3

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

 

 

USING DELPHI 3 is not a very good book to get you started learning DELPHI. It seems to just list features and functions without explaining (in a simplified format) how and why. The examples are also incomplete and a little criptic. Maybe others got some help from this book, but I found very little that I could use. Of the 12 books I have on DELPHI the best is MASTERING DELPHI 3 by Marco Cantu, followed by DELPHI UNLEASHED by Charles Calvert.

If you have programmed in another language before, but not Delphi, this is the book for you. After a quick overview of general programming concepts, Pascal data types, etc., it goes into a thorough description of the Delphi 3 language and features. I did wish that it had more info on database programming--5 chapters wasn't enough for me!

This is without doubt the best Delphi book I ever bought. This is the book that explains all the great changes that were made in Delphi 3 (major structural changes from D1 and D2). I wrote a custom TDataSet class for a custom Database my company used with the explanation provided in this book. It laid the foundation of my Delphi Career.

This is one of my favorite Delphi 3 books, as it covers material not easily found elsewhere. This is not a beginner's book by any means. The coverage of DLLs, COM, and threading is outstanding. This is a book for those who want to delve more deeply into the relationships between VCLs and the WinAPI.

I purchased this book with a view to learning more about OLE and COM which is covered very comprehensively. But I found that once I started reading the other chapters I could not put the book down. Some people have commented that this book is a poor teaching aid. This is not what this book sets out to do. QUE's guide puts this book at Accomplished to Expert level. If you are an experienced, professional programmer who needs an excellent reference book, buy this. You will not regret it.

I own nearly every Delphi 3 book available and my favorite is _Special Edition Using Delphi 3_ due to its unmatched comprehensiveness. _Mastering Delphi 3_ is also good and it is probably a better book for those new to Delphi, but _Special Edition Using Delphi 3_ covers more ground and is thus more useful as a general reference. For example, it is the only book I have seen that covers TClientDataset in detail enough for the reader to harness the considerable power of this new control. If you are going to buy only one Delphi 3 book and you intend to use it as a genearal reference, then this is the book to get.

Using Delphi 3, Special Edition is a decent book on Delphi, but doesn't cover most of the new features or benifits of Delplhi 3. Virtually nothing was said on the new component packages technology, most of the new components & tools, and virtually nothing on the new features of the code editor and enviornment.

That said this is an average book on Delphi programming, and has a few good examples and sample programs. A lot of the information can be gotten from the Delphi manuals and on-line help, and most of the topics are not very advanced.

This book doesn't stand out as "got to have" or reference text and is very misleading claiming to be a book on Delphi 3. Although one of the first to the market for Delphi 3, I'd recommend skipping this one and waiting.