Charlie Calvert's Delphi 4 Unleashed (Unleashed)

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Summary: Great Potential, will suit some, best for advanced users
Review: Charlie is an extremely engaging writer in many ways. His philosophy of programming is great reading, and the book simply covers areas (such as Corba programming) that other books do not. For this reason alone, it will be valuable to many.

The book is not a reference book, and in fact assumes a lot is already known by the reader. It is 'pitched' at the experienced intermediate-advanced reader, and in many respects is quite terse.

If you are a programmer interested in advanced topics, the book will likely be invaluable. If you are a beginner get Kent Reisdorph's 'Teach yourself Delphi 4 (+x) in 21 days' before moving on to the extremely useful Delphi 4 (+x) Developers Guide or Marco Cantu's 'Mastering Delphi 4 (+x)'.

Having said all that, it's a useful addition to your bookshelf after the other books, and another perspective which cannot hurt.

If you are on the cutting edge and know Delphi though, you may find this one of the top books around.

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Summary: This book is quite good,but I need new version about Delph5
Review: Could you tell me when you will publish the new version of this book: "Delphi5 Unleashed" ?

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Summary: Good book for every Delphi developer!
Review: Having read several good (and some not so good) books on Delphi, I would have to say that this book has some of the best content that I have seen. It is not for the Delphi developer just starting out. It does provide good insight into several of the more difficult aspects of Delphi and Windows programming. Several of the sections (including Calvert's discussion of COM) proved to be very valuable. His writing style is very straight-forward and he gives many examples in the book to help reinforce the topics discussed.

Rating:
Summary: Good book for every Delphi developer!
Review: Having read several good (and some not so good) books on Delphi, I would have to say that this book has some of the best content that I have seen. It is not for the Delphi developer just starting out. It does provide good insight into several of the more difficult aspects of Delphi and Windows programming. Several of the sections (including Calvert's discussion of COM) proved to be very valuable. His writing style is very straight-forward and he gives many examples in the book to help reinforce the topics discussed.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Intermediate to Advanced Book
Review: If you have completed using the excellent book Delphi Bible by Tom Swan, than this title should definitively be your next book that you will need to work with.

Charlie's style of writing is nothing short of brilliant. The writing style is very lucid and the complete book is highly structured and flows very smoothly. Having said that, you do not necessarily have to follow the book religiously from one chapter to another. Unlike tutorial books, where the current chapter builds upon the previous chapter, Charlie's book takes a diametrically opposite way of teaching you Delphi. A complete subject is treated in every chapter, which makes it considerably more useful for an intermediate to advanced developer.

Some very important chapters are provided on the CD which does require you to take the time to print them.

In summary - take my words, get the book, work with it and I can assure you that you will end up being if not an excellent Delphi programmer at least a well informed developer of Delphi's Advanced features.

Rating:
Summary: Not a reference, a wonderful book
Review: OK, tell the truth now - how many computer books do you have on your bookshelf that you DON'T read? I mean perfectly good books that are for some reason almost perfectly useless?

Charlie Calvert may not write the most spartan and pointed reference books, but he does offer carefully written prose that many enjoy reading, and hence will read. What is more useful? a detailed and encyclopedic reference, that tries to beat the on-line help and manuals (and whose index you search in vain twice a year), or something that you will *actually read*, savor, and might remember a bit of?

The truth of the matter is that no single book on any programming environment can cover it all, but if you are a pretty hip Delphi user, and you know you don't know everything, you will enjoy a slow read of Calvert's book, a chapter here and there, with an iced tea in the shade this summer, and find out why Charlie is so well-liked. He comes across like the older programmer that will show you a trick or two about the craft.

There are some down sides to this 1100 page tome. In almost all computer books these days, the index is ridiculously underpowered, say by a factor of 4 to 1, and Delphi 4 Unleashed is no exception. It's hard to understand why. Hey, if their indexes were better, some of the shelfware books might be useful, like looking up an example when you're desperate.

The trend towards putting selected chapters only on the CD is unacceptable. The Adobe Acrobat reader is an ABYSMAL program, and all this defeats the purpose of having a book. I loved having a WHOLE book in BOTH paper and searchable Windows Help format, like Blaszczak's MFC book, but the paper/Acrobat hybrid is a loser. I don't care what they have to do, thinner paper, limiting the scope, but I DON'T WANT parts of my books missing from the book. I will never read these chapters, and I feel cheated.

As things stand, be glad Calvert's stuff that you will read is a pleasure, and very valuable. And it is.

Rating:
Summary: Delphi 4 Unleashed Delivers what it promises!
Review: One thing you can count on with Charlie Calverts books is an easy read. He has a nack for presenting technical material in a readable format. I really hate the CD-ROM chapters that are becoming increasingly popular with publishers today but I would rather see that then too much beginners material wasting space between the covers. I also like the way he does not waste page space with full code examples. It is all on the CD-ROM, however, where it should be. This book is not a starting point for learning to program with Delphi 4. It is also not the most advanced material on the subject. It perfectly targets that gap in between those two categories and directs you to more advanced publications where appropiate. There is still enough advanced material to make this book a must have for the intermediate to advanced Delphi 4 Programmer.

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Summary: Lots of Info - Too Much Info
Review: This book gives me a big dilemma! Firstly, I have to say that some parts of the book have got me out of lots of trouble by helping me to understand some difficult concepts that the (so called) delphi help writers hadn't a hope in hell of explaining properly.

On the other hand Charlie does go on a bit. I don't think that at its root Polymorphism is a particularly difficult concept but he leaves you thinking that it must be, because he goes on-and-on about it. The other problem is that he assumes a lot of knowledge. For example there is a buckets of information about COM, ActiveX,OLE and the like, but nowhere does he tell you the relationship between all these things and when/why you would want to use them. This may not be a problem for some readers, but I haven't really managed to get much out of the later chapters as I don't have - and the book doesn't give me - a basic understanding of these Microsoft technologies. Yet Charlie goes on for page after page about the details of how Delphi implements COM, which just got me bogged down and very confused.

Don't think I am being down on this book, I'm not! Just be carefull to make sure it is the book for you. I am quite an experienced programmer, but I have little or no knowledge of Microsoft technologies and as a result found their treatment in this book very heavy going and often next to useless.

IMHO the text could have been a little more terse and they might have got in the chapters that are on CDROM. This practice is simply not acceptable.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent
Review: You can see Charlie Calvert works at Inprise. His coverage of Delphi ver 4 is very wide and detailed. Although not always as techinical as the Mastering Delphi books this book is easy reading and probably one of the best buys for someone new to Delphi or someone who would like to really harness the power of this RAD tool. In a nutshell, this is a book written by a programmer, for programmers. Great going Charlie!