Delphi 6 Developer's Guide (With CD-ROM)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: As I read through the pages in "Delphi 6 Developers Guide", I simply learned more than I expected (about Delphi 6). It compares with other programming languages, it has a CD included which contains All of the examples used in the book, and it covers everything you can do in Delphi 6.

Chapter 2 in the book gives you a nice review of the what you need to now to continue the book (I am happy that they included it); The Object Pascal Language.

In other words: I love the book, and I always use it as a reference book, if I forget what something is or how to use it. I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to become a better Delphi programmer or just to those who want to know Delphi 6 better!

Very well written; Easy to understand; Excellent book! Get it!

Rating:
Summary: Borland should ship this instead of their Developer's Guide
Review: I am only a third of the way through this huge tome; but my opinion is confirmed. This is the book that Borland should be shipping instead of their Developer's Guide. This covers much of the same information with clearer examples and much better organization. It even has the same cover colors!

This book is neither exciting or wonderful. But for intermediate to advanced software instruction it does a more than adequate job.

I took away a rating star for getting too densely into some esoteric aspects of Threads and Component creation while skipping over some of the necessary basics. Neither the Borland Developer's Guide, nor this book, have much to say about graphical Form design or development.
I would think that many more developers are using Delphi to create user interfaces and displaying database information than create multi-threaded components.

The Borland Developer's Guide is very inconsistent. It is obviously written by a committee. Some parts have apparently been revised many times but have never been rewritten (sort of like a lot of corporate code). Some parts are excellent and some parts are terrible. The Devloper's Guide should be sold as a sleep inducer.

I love Delphi and have used every version from 1 to 6. I am studying for Borland Certification. But Borland does a lackluster job with documentation and examples. In the on-line help the examples given are usually extremely short and often irrelevant to the task at hand. I suspect that the on-line help and the Developer's Guide are written by the same people.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written - but a start
Review: I have this book. There's not much literature around about Delphi 6 yet, so this is better than nothing. It contains a lot of information, however it appears to have been written in a hurry - it is very poorly put together. I have just been following the WebSnap chapter examples through, and the steps aren't in the correct order, some are repeated, and are not specific. Incorrect component names are referred to etc etc. It's just as well I have some experience and can work it out and see the errors. Definitely not recommended for anyone with little Delphi or Web Application experience.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written - but a start
Review: I have this book. There's not much literature around about Delphi 6 yet, so this is better than nothing. It contains a lot of information, however it appears to have been written in a hurry - it is very poorly put together. I have just been following the WebSnap chapter examples through, and the steps aren't in the correct order, some are repeated, and are not specific. Incorrect component names are referred to etc etc. It's just as well I have some experience and can work it out and see the errors. Definitely not recommended for anyone with little Delphi or Web Application experience.

Rating:
Summary: If you want to become a Delphi expert, read this.
Review: Simply put, if you want to not only learn Delphi, but learn some professional development tricks that can take you a long time to learn on your own or you want to learn how to be a better Delphi developer, you have to read this book. If you just want to learn Delphi in-and-of-its-own, then the Borland developer's guide is enough.

Pacheco, et al have included a lot of important, "real-world" and useable knowledge in this book and I know many people that overlook the breadth of knowledege imparted in its pages.

Read this if you want to be more than just a "Delphi" developer.

~ Michael Nigohosian, author - "The Secret Path to Contract Programming Riches: An Expert Consultant's Step-by-Step Guide That..."

Rating:
Summary: Well Rounded Title
Review: This is an excellent book, covers the entire Delphi 6 product about as well as any single book could. The chapters on the COM related technologies are very helpful. The New Internet features of Delphi 6 are also given in depth treatment. If you do Delphi 6, this book should be within reach at all times.

Rating:
Summary: Puts you on the road to Delphi Guruhood
Review: Unlike Cantu's Mastering Delphi 6, Delphi Developer's Guide is intended for those who are able to digest the Borland manuals and wish to take their Delphi knowledge even further. Absolutely no fluff here, every page contains interesting and useful info and the book as a whole is full of useful techniques you can use in real-world projects.

All aspects of Delphi 6 programming are covered here: from Win32 API calls to threading to CORBA to writing your own VCL components to advanced Delphi databasing topics and more importantly, each is covered in depth.

My favorite parts include the section where the author describes in very readable manner how Delphi evolved from the first version to version 6, highlighting the important differences and improvements introduced with each new version.

Another is the chapter on threads which explained thread basics very well and went a lot further (more than I was ready for actually). This chapter alone is so densely packed with info that it alone could be worth a third the price of the book!

Rating:
Summary: A excellent book for Delphi
Review: Unlike D5DG, this book doesn't copy most chapters from the previous version. Many chapters are new to the readers, and the remain chapters are rewrite for Delphi 6.
It's very useful for the reader who ever have the D5DG. And it's also very useful for the newer, because the CD-ROM contains entire text of D5DG and D6DG.