What is the easiest/most effective way to learn Delphi?

Question

I am totally new to programming and I have chosen Delphi as the programming language that I would like to learn.

I basically want to build tools that will fill and submi

Answer 1

A couple years ago I tried to learn Delphi and then gave up in frustration. I was learning on my own and had a difficult time with the incomplete docs and few current books. In hindsight, outdated books weren't as problematic as the more current books because the more current books are written for an audience that knows both Pascal and Delphi and thus leave out a lot of crucial info for the newbie. I was working on porting a VB6 project and ended up using .Net which was more familiar given my experience in VB and Java.

Just recently I had to write a quick little utility that needed some direct Win32 functionality and I thought it would be a good project for Delphi. Small, fast, Win32. I dusted off my license and started poking around again. In the intervening years I've learned a few more languages and was less stumped by the Pascal syntax than my previous attempt. In a few hours I had finished my task and I decided to try to learn a little more.

So far, I've been really impressed with the Delphi 5 Developer Guide. It has opened my eyes to the elegance of the VCL and Delphi. There are more recent versions, but I think this one is perhaps the best because it deals with a version of Delphi before the now defunct Kylix project. Books that are written for version 6 thru 2006 spend way too much time describing either Kylix or Delphi.Net, both of which are dead and useless to spend time learning. The Delphi 5 books are equally as long as later editions, but spend all of those pages on the Win32 features of the VCL and some very valuable tutorials on Pascal (which is handy for those of us that went through our school years without learning Pascal).

How do you learn any of the new stuff that has happened since Delphi 5? I think Bob Swart's short update books are probably best. You can find them here. A lot of folks like Marco Cantu's books as well, but I personally haven't found his books very useful.

Good luck! I look forward to reading more suggestions.