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Rating: 
Summary: A "MUST" for the beginning Delphi programmer.
Review: "Programming Principles Explained". That sums up this book. I am a freshman programmer. I have had two semesters of Turbo Pascal 7.0. An instructor of mine suggested I advance to Delphi. I bought Delphi 5 (Professional) at the student discount. The book included with Delphi was over my head. I found and purchased this book. It takes you from ground zero to the top using a variety of practical application exercises. If you are a novice who is interested in Delphi and RAD (Rapid Application Development), this is the book you need. It is definitely worth the price. The book is well written, easy to read, includes plenty of code examples, and makes you utilize the many different tools that Delphi has to offer. The authors did a wonderful job of providing end of chapter quizzes and practical application exercises to strengthen what was learned in working through the chapter. Buying this book is not something you will regret.
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Summary: Good foundation to Delphi 4 or 5
Review: I found this book to be very good in presenting Delphi in a understandable manner. Having a computer science background, I could grasp the concepts easily and never seem to get bored of the book. Even if you don't have a background in programming, I definitely recommend this book to start you off because its an easy read, and you will not have go through tons of concepts before reaching the code but instead, it'll present useful coded examples followed with important explainations on how/why its done. I got this book because I wanted to start off my Delphi adventure, and it delivered! Its also comforting to know that its not a thick book!! It gives you plenty of examples and teaches you what you REALLY need to know, using Object Pascal and the RAD components! Not only that, it gives you self-review and practice questions to work on after each chapter. So basically it cuts to the chase and tells you what you ought to learn rather than what you might find useful. As a conclusion, I recommend that you buy this book whatever your level of programming may be as it not only shows you how Delphi is used but also builds up your foundation on programming principles as shown in the book.
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Summary: EXCELLENT FOR FRESHMAN PROGRAMMERS
Review: I have two semesters of Turbo Pascal 7.0. In those two semesters I had limited exposure to Object Oriented Programming. This book is excellent if you have the basic programming skills (variables, constants, loops, program structure, etc.) and nothing else. I purchased Delphi 5 (Professional). This book and it's examples all work with this version. If you are a newbie (like me), inexperienced and unsure (like me), this is the book for you. It is definitely worth the money. The chapter quizzes and exercises require you to review and practice the things you learned throughout the chapter. It is not written in "technical terms". You will learn how to apply everything from an array to a record using delphi. If you have the desire to make professional looking windows applications with nothing but the basic programming skills, then buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent For Beginner
Review: If you have never programmed in Turbo Pascal, than you should almost certainly get a copy of this book. It does indeed teach Delphi from grounds up and you will learn a great deal. If you are fully conversant with Pascal Syntax and structure, you might gain something reading through this book, but I do believe that you will gain more by reading through Tom Swan's book Delphi Bible followed by Charles Calvert Delphi Unleashed
Rating: 
Summary: good examples but slow and missing important info
Review: it may be good for the novice, but as i already know 3 other languages i found it slow and missing alot of important information. It goes straight in with programing examples and doesnt provide a good foundation for understanding how delphi programs are structured. The tiny chapter on objects was very poor. Also they never explained how find the info on the components. I think the fact that delhpi is so easy to use may make this book seem better than it is. It is a bit like giving people instructions without ever helping them to undestand what they are doing. I expect beginers will like it because it avoids the in depth explanations and is more about trying out examples. If you are already a proficient programer then you will find this book far to long. It could be easily sumarised it into 50 pages and still contain all the info. If you want to learn about Object Orientated programing forget this book. The thing that most anoyed me was the fact that they had code snippets that were numbered as if from line 1 when the code was not from the start of the program. To the novice programer this could be very confusing. And they had snippets with no line numbering. Are they purposly trying to confuse people.
Rating: 
Summary: Why so pricey
Review: This book is for version 3. Borland has released version 8. Why isnt this book cheaper?
A book on AutoCAD 12 would sell for $3.00.
Rating:
Summary: A great easy to read book!
Review: This book is, as the authors state, a classroom text for the beginning progammer. I could see this book working for a first semester programmer using Delphi as a menas to learn programming with a 4GL. But this book leands little to even a less than seasoned developer. There is a niche in the programming community for this book in that Delphi has come of age and so has most of the contempoary books. Few authors today want to go back and repeat what they wrote for Delphi I. I fine it very desirable that Delphi is being used as a programming teaching tool. It is far more suited for the task than VB. Hopefully books of this order will encourage this endeavor.
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