As I offered a few comments on another writers effort to introduce
Delphi 2009 just the other day, I thought it only fair that I do the same
for this one. And like always, I read thru the entire pdf file first, and
then concentrated on some of the areas that were of more interest to me than
the rest.
I was disappointed with Marco Cantu's introduction which CodeGear
has been giving away along side any Delphi purchase made directly from
them...mainly because unlike so many of his books which I'd used as my guide
over the years, this one seemed as if it was a copy cat version of technical
info already available, using a more theoretical approach and not providing
the number and kind of examples which might have made it much more useful
than I found it to be!
Bob Swart's version as named above, is as different from the other
as two supposedly equal endeavors could be however. Providing a wealth of
very well explained information on Delphi 2009 in nearly half as many pages!
First, and in opposition to Cantu's version, the info that Bob
offered was much easier to read and understand. This being true for a
number of reasons like the fact he presented everything in the proper order
as any technical writing should take care to do. Instead of jumping right
into the heady subject of Unicode in the first chapter as Marco did, Bob
began by going thru the IDE and all its new changes, taking the time to make
sure the reader understood how to setup the new Options dialog, build
various default and custom configurations, how to handle its remote
debugging, and even ways to better prepare a project via configurations and
error handling that at least I know I hadn't considered before!
You can't even begin to compare these two guides as far as new
language and VCL enhancements go. Cantu's version went over Generics and
Anonymous methods to be sure, but Bob's then went even further, explaining
the usefulness of Sealed Classes, Strict private and protected fields and
methods, function inlining, and a whole lot more! And when he got into the
VCL he didn't simply outling the new components being offered, but went into
great detail over Actions, Action Managers, and customized dialogs.
Finally, and after going over the COM changes, DBX4 and Datasnap, Bob
offered detailed chapters on Unicode and Globalization that because of the
many practical assessments and examples included, really made things a lot
clearer than I was beginning to think these topics could be.
Those of you who have read my critiques before know that I rarely
write about those things I like. Probably because its a lot easier to be
negative about something than it is to offer praise. But in this case, my
considerations of these two endeavors are so dramatically different...each
one being at opposite ends of the measuring stick and so far apart from each
other...I just had to give it a try!
I've heard from so many now that Delphi 2009 isn't much of an
upgrade over its predecessors, but I simply cannot believe that. In fact, I
think it to be just the opposite! Not just in the number of changes, but in
the scale and importance of new features as well! And to get up to speed
with all these new improvements, a good, easy to understand, affordable
guide is absolutely necessary. Delphi 2009 Development Essentials by Bob
Swart meets this need quite well!
from "Robert Meek" dba "Tangentals Design"
Creative Concepts Programming for Windows Vista
E-mail: [email protected]
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so!"
[Bertrand Russell 1872-1970]
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