This book is intended for those of us who want to start working with Delphi (and for Windows Programming) and come from a C/C++ background. The book is full with little C examples and equivalent ObjectPascal/Delphi examples, and is therefore a good way for all those C programmers who realised they need to get their hands on Delphi and get up to speed right now!

The book is divided into three sections: introduction & usage, programming and language. The introduction & usage section contains the usual background and information of the most important features of Delphi and the IDE. The programming section demonstrates the use of many of the Delphi components in a 'how-to' fashion by developing a project and then extending it along the way. The language section - the main part of the book - concentrates on the ObjectPascal programming language and OOP in a practical manner. The author explains the basics of OO and uses a lot of C examples to show the differences between C/C++ and ObjectPascal. This part is therefore especially useful to current (past?) programmers of C/C++ or 'plain' Pascal that want to move up to Delphi and ObjectPascal.
Other than these three parts there is a good chapter on rousting errors with the integrated debugger of Delphi, which is something we almost forget we can do at all (at times). A nice chapter that shows the ins and outs of the IDE debugger!

The book contains very little (almost none) database stuff, but that's not strange, since the main objective was to teach OO Windows Programming with Delphi and ObjectPascal for current C or non-OOP programmers. I think for those readers, coming from a C background, or stepping up to OOP, this book certainly has a lot to offer! There is no disk, but the code is never much more than a few lines.

(Bob Swart)