blacklord
asked on
Where to start?
Hi Everyone!
I am preparing for learning Borland Delhpi v6. I have good knowledge and experience (especially on web development - PHP & MySQL/MS-SQL) on programming.
And now, i want to increase my knowledge and starting developing Windows softwares. I have choosen Borland Delphi because it is stronger than VBasic but easy as VBasic.
Could you please suggest me sites or books for starting Delphi coding and Borland Delphi. I don't have so many experience on Windows programming.
Thanks in advance.
I am preparing for learning Borland Delhpi v6. I have good knowledge and experience (especially on web development - PHP & MySQL/MS-SQL) on programming.
And now, i want to increase my knowledge and starting developing Windows softwares. I have choosen Borland Delphi because it is stronger than VBasic but easy as VBasic.
Could you please suggest me sites or books for starting Delphi coding and Borland Delphi. I don't have so many experience on Windows programming.
Thanks in advance.
Like Hypoviax suggested, Marco Cantu has made a couple books for delphi that are very good and his site is very informative.
If you want to buy a couple books on Delphi I would recommend "Mastering Delphi 6" (by Cantu) and "Delphi in a Nutshell" (a reference book).
a couple websites I visit alot are:
http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/
http://www.torry.ru/ (lots of tips and components)
http://delphi.about.com/
delphi is a great language to first learn, luck to you :)
If you want to buy a couple books on Delphi I would recommend "Mastering Delphi 6" (by Cantu) and "Delphi in a Nutshell" (a reference book).
a couple websites I visit alot are:
http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/
http://www.torry.ru/ (lots of tips and components)
http://delphi.about.com/
delphi is a great language to first learn, luck to you :)
You would be surprised of how many nice and interesting things you cand find if you do a search on google for " delphi tips" "delphi howto" "delphi tutorial" "delphi faq" and so on....
And by the way delphi it's a lot easyer that VBasic, and of course it's stronger... :)
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Thanks Alex, your thoughts are really interesting. So, which windows programming language should i learn? VBasic, Delphi, or anything else? C is hard to learn so no need to consider C :(
I think VBasic is good but in my opinion it is not so powerful programming language, right? What would you suggest? I don't want to spend my valuable hours learning Delphi and then see Delphi out-of-date in a few years :(
If i learn VBasic, will i be able to do any kind of windows softwares?
What would you suggest? Thanks!
I think VBasic is good but in my opinion it is not so powerful programming language, right? What would you suggest? I don't want to spend my valuable hours learning Delphi and then see Delphi out-of-date in a few years :(
If i learn VBasic, will i be able to do any kind of windows softwares?
What would you suggest? Thanks!
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@blacklord,
Delphi is still a good option to start learning but it's just that I cannot guarantee that it's still in demand over 5 years. Then again, there's also a chance that the .NET soapbubble will explode, with everyone suddenly moving to the Linux platform. :-)
When I learned programming about 20 years ago, I started with Basic but quickly moved to Pascal. I've always kept an eye on both languages and just saw Basic becoming more and more obscure while Pascal just improved to a gread RAD tool. (Delphi) But all this time Basic continued to stay popular since it's such an easy language to learn.
If you want to learn to program, Delphi would still be fine but focus more on algorithms and structures. Also keep an eye on other programming languages and try to get at least a basic idea about their syntax and perhaps a bit more. AFAIK, the future of VB will be to generate the GUI front-ends for lots of programs with C++ or C# as the back-end of these products. It will mean that developers will be specializing more into certain techniques, with VB being the most popular one since it's so easy. I have to admit that C++ is quite hard for an inexperienced developer but the alternative could be C#. (But it will tie you down to the .NET platform.)
Personally, I would choose to learn two languages at once. (Delphi and C#) It's not easy but it allows you to "wait and see" what the future will bring.
@snehanshu,
The problem with Delphi 8 is that people (and especially companies) need to BUY the product. Unfortunately, many companies have an MSDN Subscription, providing them free or cheap Visual Studio licences combined with several other bonuses. Spending $3000 per licence on Delphi 8 is quite expensive for most of them. In price, Borland is losing this competition.
But true, Delphi did create a nice .NET product but this too has a flaw. To publish your Delphi-created product you might need to include a few of the Delphi.NET assemblies. With VS you don't have these worries in general, unless you're using 3rd-party components. Besides, while MS claims it would end the DLL Hell, I just think it just replaces the DLL hell. I've already had problems in applications just because one or more assemblies were missing. True, these problems are easier to solve but still, it bothers me that you need to include the Borland .NET assemblies with your product while you don't have to do this with any VS-generated product. (Unless you're not using the VCL in your Delphi programs, of course.)
I'm personally not that fond of .NET anyway and won't use it for any desktop application. It does have it's strength in webdevelopment, though. Which is what I'm using Delphi 8 for. For all other applications I'm still using Delphi 7. More familiar too. And unfortunately for Borland, many other developers are thinking in similar ways.
There's also a minor problem if you're trying to use Delphi 8 for mobile devices. (SmartPhones for example.) While VS does support mobile devices, you won't find similar support from within Delphi. And all the while the mobile market is becoming quite interesting. Still, the mobile market is mostly dominated with java applications and platform-specific C++ applications but Microsoft is trying to gain a bigger market share with their Mobile Windows versions with .NET support...
All I'm hoping for is that Delphi 9 will offer mobile code support in some way, next to WIN32 and .NET support. And perhaps even Unix support. But we'll know more about this in about 6 months or so...
Delphi is still a good option to start learning but it's just that I cannot guarantee that it's still in demand over 5 years. Then again, there's also a chance that the .NET soapbubble will explode, with everyone suddenly moving to the Linux platform. :-)
When I learned programming about 20 years ago, I started with Basic but quickly moved to Pascal. I've always kept an eye on both languages and just saw Basic becoming more and more obscure while Pascal just improved to a gread RAD tool. (Delphi) But all this time Basic continued to stay popular since it's such an easy language to learn.
If you want to learn to program, Delphi would still be fine but focus more on algorithms and structures. Also keep an eye on other programming languages and try to get at least a basic idea about their syntax and perhaps a bit more. AFAIK, the future of VB will be to generate the GUI front-ends for lots of programs with C++ or C# as the back-end of these products. It will mean that developers will be specializing more into certain techniques, with VB being the most popular one since it's so easy. I have to admit that C++ is quite hard for an inexperienced developer but the alternative could be C#. (But it will tie you down to the .NET platform.)
Personally, I would choose to learn two languages at once. (Delphi and C#) It's not easy but it allows you to "wait and see" what the future will bring.
@snehanshu,
The problem with Delphi 8 is that people (and especially companies) need to BUY the product. Unfortunately, many companies have an MSDN Subscription, providing them free or cheap Visual Studio licences combined with several other bonuses. Spending $3000 per licence on Delphi 8 is quite expensive for most of them. In price, Borland is losing this competition.
But true, Delphi did create a nice .NET product but this too has a flaw. To publish your Delphi-created product you might need to include a few of the Delphi.NET assemblies. With VS you don't have these worries in general, unless you're using 3rd-party components. Besides, while MS claims it would end the DLL Hell, I just think it just replaces the DLL hell. I've already had problems in applications just because one or more assemblies were missing. True, these problems are easier to solve but still, it bothers me that you need to include the Borland .NET assemblies with your product while you don't have to do this with any VS-generated product. (Unless you're not using the VCL in your Delphi programs, of course.)
I'm personally not that fond of .NET anyway and won't use it for any desktop application. It does have it's strength in webdevelopment, though. Which is what I'm using Delphi 8 for. For all other applications I'm still using Delphi 7. More familiar too. And unfortunately for Borland, many other developers are thinking in similar ways.
There's also a minor problem if you're trying to use Delphi 8 for mobile devices. (SmartPhones for example.) While VS does support mobile devices, you won't find similar support from within Delphi. And all the while the mobile market is becoming quite interesting. Still, the mobile market is mostly dominated with java applications and platform-specific C++ applications but Microsoft is trying to gain a bigger market share with their Mobile Windows versions with .NET support...
All I'm hoping for is that Delphi 9 will offer mobile code support in some way, next to WIN32 and .NET support. And perhaps even Unix support. But we'll know more about this in about 6 months or so...
Well ... and what about Java?
Java 1.5 looks like impressive. I really think .NET needs a lot of work to do yet, it's not a perfect platform. I think in near future there will be a "batlle" between C# ( .net ) and Java. Borland positioned in both sides ( J Builder and C#.NET / Delphi 8 .NET ). Of course .Net has a lot of advantage ( it will be imposed by microsoft, as always ), but i think Java has a great defense. The only think i'm agree with Alex is that Delphi will become a "rare" development environment except if Delphi 9 does some kind of miracle like modifing again Pascal ( adding operator overloading, templates, true multiplatform code generation, .... ) and including more powerfull tools.
Edu
Java 1.5 looks like impressive. I really think .NET needs a lot of work to do yet, it's not a perfect platform. I think in near future there will be a "batlle" between C# ( .net ) and Java. Borland positioned in both sides ( J Builder and C#.NET / Delphi 8 .NET ). Of course .Net has a lot of advantage ( it will be imposed by microsoft, as always ), but i think Java has a great defense. The only think i'm agree with Alex is that Delphi will become a "rare" development environment except if Delphi 9 does some kind of miracle like modifing again Pascal ( adding operator overloading, templates, true multiplatform code generation, .... ) and including more powerfull tools.
Edu
Specifically these examples of Delphi 6 may help you
http://www.marcocantu.com/md6/md6code.zip
Regards
Hypoviax