I thought I was good at Delphi. My first Pascal compiler was the UCSD p-system on Apple II in about 1978, I've been a Borland fan since Turbo Pascal days, and I went through every version of Delphi from 1 to 5.

Then I stopped upgrading, because there was no longer any compelling reason to do that, and anyway it was becoming breathtakingly expensive. Sounds familiar? read on.

This year I wanted to make a Delphi 5 database application work in Vista. That turned out to be so hard and unrewarding that I bought Delphi 2007.

I was expecting a learning curve. I got one. More like a learning cliff. It was almost as bad as the first time I saw Turbo Pascal for Windows ("_This_ is _Pascal_??")

Then I bought this book and now I'm not lost anymore. Not expert, not comfortable even, and certainly not productive yet. But no longer lost.

There are two kinds of programmers. There are the programmers who can look at sample code and grok how it works. And there are the programmers who read the specifications and use the samples only as a way to get going quicker, and to fill in the gaps in the docs.

The first kind of programmer generally despises the second. And vice versa; but the first kind think they hold the intellectual high ground: they don't even believe we are proper programmers.

Marco Cantù must be one of the second kind, because otherwise he could not write the kind of book we need.

I could have wished this book had been about half as long again. But one can't have everything.

If you're the second kind of programmer and you are even half as lost as I was, buy this book.

Another amazing title by Marco.

I recommend this book (and his previous books).

Do yourself a favour.. BUY this book..
(and visit his website for the latest Delphi news..)