Can anyone recommend some decent resources for a .NET developer who wishes to get a high level overview of the Delphi language?
We are about acquire a small business whose main product is developed in Delphi and I am wanting to build up enough knowledge to be able to talk the talk with them.
Books, websites etc all appreciated.
Thanks.
DelphiBasics gives a good overview of basic syntax, library functions etc.
Essential Delphi is a free e-book by Marco Cantu that should give a good overview, also of the VCL
Feel free to ask around here as well, or in the Delphi newsgroups, if you encounter specific issues :)
[edit] #Martin:
There's a free "Turbo" edition available at the Codegear/Embarcadero website. I guess it has some limitations, so you could also try downloading the trial version.
There's also a Delphi wiki
This even has a "Beginning Delphi" page with lots of external links on it. (some of them already mentioned)
http://www.delphifeeds.com/ is a good place to start, it has most news about what is going on in the delphi community.
There are a number of videos by Alister Christie at codegearguru - check them out :)
edit... #Martin, check out the Turbo products at CodeGear
#Martin there is a free version.
Turbo Delphi
If you are comfortable with c# you will see many similarities with Delphi.
I also found the community surrounding the newsgroups to be active and helpful. They have a smilar concept to MVPs they were called Team B (but as Borland doesn't own them the name may have changed now).
Related
I am trying to find a Delphi Programming Manual where I can see a description of what each function does, its arguments, and return values. Does anyone know where I can find one? Something similar to Microsoft's?
Just so you know, I have never EVER programmed Delphi before and I know absolutely nothing about it (and I don't have the time to learn it).
Thanks!
The official site for Delphi documentation is the Embarcadero Documentation Wikiwhich can be found in this location Online Help for Delphi® XE2 and C++Builder® XE2, this is the equivalent to the MSDN of Microsoft. if you are looking for tutorials check this question Delphi = Pascal? Resources for Learning?
One of the better resources for this is to find the Windows based help files from an earlier version. So much better and more informative than the current help (but not perfect!). I have the Delphi 6 Files loaded in an easily accessible folder for reference. Or scour ebay for older printed Manuals. The basic VCL and windows API calls have not changed that much over the years.
If you like books better than reading online. http://www.lulu.com/shop/bob-swart/delphi-xe-development-essentials/paperback/product-13211362.html
I'm a C++-Programmer. But now i have to learn Pascal/Pascal. Are there any websites, documents around that can teach someone with my knowledge the difference?
It shouldn't be too difficult to pick up. C's design was influenced by ALGOL and Pascal, so the semantics and logical flow are going to be pretty familiar. You can get an overview of the differences between basic Pascal and basic C here.
But you tagged this as Delphi and you mentioned C++, which implies that you'll need information on OOP techniques. Try this article or this one, which compare object-oriented programming in Delphi with C++ and other languages. Both are a bit dated, but most of the basic information in them still applies today.
If you have any specific questions about language features, feel free to ask them here, and welcome to Stack Overflow!
You can check Essential Pascal written by Marco Cantù, is a introduction to the Pascal programming language. you can download a free copy from here.
Another excellent site for beginners, is Delphi Basics, this web site provides help and reference for the fundamentals of the Delphi language. It gives an introduction to the Delphi Object Oriented Language for newcomers.
A website that helped me a lot when I learned Delphi was http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/. I still use it. It presents common methods in a nice way.
You might consider this post on beginner guides to Delphi. It has some good links included that may be rather simplistic for you, but can still take you a long way.
Marco Cantu (mentioned in several answers) also has a book series called "Mastering Delphi." It is a great (maybe only) top to bottom resource. Everything Delphi is in it. But the last edition is for 2005. Four versions of Delphi have been released since. There are a couple of update sheets available from Marco's website (D2006 was mostly a bug fix of 2005). And Marco also has the Handbook series, but that is aimed at people who already know Delphi and are looking for help on the newest improvements.
Personally, Delphi is my favorite language. I hope you enjoy it!
your name sounds german so you might wanne check these pages out
delphipraxis
it's not really a comparison for cpp and delphi/pascal but you'll find a lot of information
due to me being a new user i'm not able to post a second link. but search google for delphi forum..
The Free Pascal documentation is another great resource:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs.var
Individually, the Turbo Delphi releases and the new improvements added in Delphi 2009 are two of the best things that have happened to Delphi in a long time. But currently you can only get one or the other. Does anyone know if Embarcadero has any plans to release a Turbo Delphi 2009?
I'm a paying customer with my own copy of D2009, but I'm trying to set up an open-source project that's going to use Generics quite a bit, and it would really help with getting other people on board if the language was available as a free download.
There's some info in this podcast. What we know now: Yes, there will probably be one. But it probably won't be as feature-rich as the last Turbo was.
It was mentioned in the closing keynote at CodeRage. No official dates, but they said they definitely want have a Turbo level offering.
Does anyone know about an ORM or something similar for Delphi Win32.
Marco Cantu is a big believer in InstantObjects:
http://www.instantobjects.org/
Others include DObject:
http://www.macrobject.com/en/dobject/
and tiOPF
http://tiopf.sourceforge.net/Doc/overview/index.shtml
You also might be interested in the G Framework:
http://code.google.com/p/g-framework/
Another Open Source ORM for Delphi 6-XE2, which is JSON based and Client/Server.
Can use its own in memory database layer or embedded SQLite3 database engine:
http://blog.synopse.info/category/Open-Source-Projects/SQLite3-Framework
Edit: A lot of improvements to this active framework, since this question was answered. It is able now to connect to any third-party database, and is changing its name: it is now called the mORMot framework.
There are a few, some of the more tried and tested are...
Bold
TiOPF
And RemObjects also has a schema Mapping technology that is worth investigating
TMS Software is working on an ORM framework for Delphi: TMS Aurelius should be soon released :
TMS Aurelius
EDIT:
It's been already released, official site is http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/aurelius.asp
Another ORM for Delphi, which seems to be in active development, is hcOPF
The project is open source licensed under LGPL/MPL and hosted on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/larryhengensopf/.
dorm, “The Delphi ORM” by Daniele Teti, was officially published at ITDevCon, there is an introduction here. It works with PODOs which have no knowledge of the ORM.
New in 2011: DORM - http://code.google.com/p/delphi-orm/. Some documentation can be found on author's blog.
Visit http://code.google.com/p/persiphi/ if your are addicted to Delphi 2010 or upper.
Edit:
Dead link as the owner likely has renounced to opensource it. Nevertheless, his master thesis work in portugese (pt-br) is still available here. A good source of inspiration for those in search of sample using latest bleeding edge features of Delphi (Annotation, Rtti...) in the realm of object persistence.
UPDATE 1:
DevArt has released EntityDAC - An ORM for Delphi with LINQ support!
It works even with D11 (Delphi 2007).
UPDATE 2:
Marshmallow ORM framework by Linas Naginionis.
It has joined join the outstanding Spring4D project as a feature branch as announced here.
To keep abreast of the latest news head to the Marshmallow Google+ thriving Community page.
Dubbed MM ORM Framework by its author, it's a promising one.
Jazz SDK, ORM is a part of the OPF part
http://jazz-sdk.googlecode.com
Here you have one: http://code.google.com/p/delphiorm/
I tried Remobject Data Abstract for 1-2 year in some real world projects.
Some features are good (a very good binary comunication protocol), some other are simply pitfalls (it adds a something of chaotic code and you have to pass dialog by dialog every change you made on the schema).
It's good you define a schema of the model, it's bad you miss much of the power of SQL (es grouping by, a easy to use join, ecc).
I think that it's hard to fit a good ORM on top of the old VCL and TDataSet.
DatAbstact was a try but at the end I rewrited my application in another language because a good ORM and a good framework is a must have for a good application.
VCL is simply too old to fit well with modern concepts of application development.
Anyway i tried InstantObject and Bold, are two good ORM frameworks but not more supported.
The majority of components available for Delphi do not have HTML Help files for Delphi 2009. Many components including some very popular commercial components only have HLP and CHM help files.
Many of the third-party components are no longer being actively developed but are used by many developers. As a result there is no IDE help for these components.
There were very few complaints about the old CHM help files but today there are a large number of complaints about the help file system. Maybe it is time for Codegear to rethink the type of help file system used.
One of the complaints that I have about it is even when you install components that provide HTML help files the Contents Tab becomes corrupted where by previously installed component contents are removed.
Are there possible alternatives for Codegear to consider?
I have the same feeling. The old help system helps me more quickly to find an answer.
One idea is to maybe to model it after the Delphi Wiki at: http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Delphi_Wiki
The wiki actually isn't set up that bad, especially with the VCL link in the left frame.
It's fairly pleasant to look at, has a decent search, includes issues, examples, cross references, and what I like the most: user comments and tips.
Actually regarding the user comments and tips, the thing I like most about the PHP documentation at www.php.net/docs.php (which I think is the best programming documentation I've seen) is the user comments and tips.
If they can integrate the great layout that you'll find at Delphi Basics into it, and allow 3rd party components to add their help files into it, then they'll have a complete reference. (But the 3rd parties will obviously have to restructure their help files to the new format - whatever it ends up as).
The wiki also has sections for Tutorials, Tips and Tricks, References and Popular Articles. And I think it could also become the all-encompassing code-repository we all would like.
An option to download the help wiki should be allowed so it can be accessed offline.
And they'll have to figure out how to get the F1 key to work to properly search the wiki/help file, whether online or offline, and give the most relevant results.
The trouble with the Wiki now is that it is not complete, and the full set of Delphi help files need to be incorporated into it.
This might be a pipedream, but something like this would be my ideal.
This is a pet hate of mine. The Delphi Help has just got worse, although with a recent slight improvement. I honestly believe that this is one of the things holding back its adoption.
Micosoft introduced Help3 for VS2010, so maybe we will see it in Delphi too:
here is a blog post which answers the question "Why A New Help System?"
http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/2010/10/the-story-of-help-in-visual-studio-2010/
It quotes an internal paper, which led to the new "Help3" project in
early 2008:
"The paper described the following
issues with the help experience in
Visual Studio:
Not being able to find the information you need is a common
problem. F1 Help and Search do not
work as well as they should.
The performance of the help system – primarily start-up, topic-load,
local search results – is one of the
biggest problems.
The offline MSDN library install is fragile due to the complexities of
the help system.
The proprietary nature of our help format offers little incentive for
partners to develop authoring tools
and cannot be easily adopted by
developers in their own products.
On the content production side, the help platform saddles us with
outdated tools and processes.
Finally, and most importantly, no single team at Microsoft owns solving
these problems."