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

It seems not everyone can be a good programmer (see also Joel's comment) as some people seem to have lot's of trouble understanding basic concepts like pointers and recursion, which are indicators that some problem solving skills are in deficit. Maybe you're that kind of person, maybe not.

Said that, I think that you should first learn problem abstraction, programming logic, then at least learn the purpose of basic data structures (arrays, lists, dictionaries, records, classes, trees, etc) and some basic software design (MVC, maybe object oriented design concepts, etc).

Dijkstra seems to argue that is better to be able to fully understand the problem and build a solution before writing any code as, according to him, that leads to better quality software.

Get good books on programming and data structures. Taking classes is also a good idea, it doesn't matter if they're specifically for Delphi as the concepts of software design don't rely on a specific language and knowledge can be transfered from one language to the other.

Obviously you should try to put in practice what you've learnt. Practice a lot, but try to really understand what you're doing, and when thing go wrong, try to understand why.

Anyway, if what you really want is to build one application then skip all above and go the trial and error approach.