The mission

There are many programming languages out there. Most of them brag to be able to create cross-platform applications and to allow you to “easily create rich GUI applications” but miserably fail.

In this book, we will actually achieve true cross-platform GUI applications with code that is 100% portable on Windows, Mac, Android, Linux, etc. I promise it WON’T be a bumpy road!

Your first Hello World application will be a single EXE file, few MB in size that will run on all major platforms without any additional libraries (Java, runtime DLLs, browsers, etc) required.

For whom is this book?

This book is specially written for

• People that have little in programming
• C++ programmers that want to switch to a more productive environment
• Programmers that are advanced but never actually did GUI or cross-platform applications

What you will learn

• What is the best IDE/compiler to develop cross-platform applications (modern, easy, fast, portable)
• Basic programming skills
• How to debug like a pro
• Create GUI applications
• Create less-buggy/more reliable applications
• Advanced debugging techniques

For whom is this book for?

This book is for everyone who wants to learn how to build fast, good-looking, stable applications. It doesn't matter if you never wrote a line of code, we will start from ground zero, but we will not stop until we reach the most advanced topics.

What is Delphi?

Delphi is a modern multi-purpose programming language. With Delphi, we can create cool looking graphic applications for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Take a look at "Let there be styles" chapter to see Delphi programs in all their beauty.

Delphi is fast, Delphi is easy to learn (seriously), Delphi is free (for personal use with its Community Edition).

Whether you’re a curious novice venturing into the world of coding for the first time or already the user of a different programming language, this book is your gateway to Delphi coding.

The first book concentrates on the exploration of the Delphi language. It doesn’t matter if you never wrote a line of code – we will start from ground zero, but the process will be faster if you already have done some programming in other languages.

Even if you are a (young) Delphi programmer, you could still learn a few tricks from the first book (check the summary).
If you are an old-school Pascal programmer that was always afraid to switch to objects, I promise, this is THE BOOK for you!

The second book is for the more seasoned developer aiming to enhance their craft and concentrates on the more advanced topics, such as libraries and architecture design, compiler’s and debugger’s inner working, proper exception handling and most important safer code.

What will you learn from this book?

This is not the regular “programmer’s manual” kind of book where I show you the basics of programming and keep circling around stupid-simple code examples. While I do kick-start you into programming, the main purpose of this book is to take you to the “meta” level of programming and even deep beyond that. But while study the language as regular, mere programmers, we will learn in the background how to build stable programs through reliable code, how to avoid typical programming pitfalls, why some programming concepts are safer than others, how to turn mondain Delphi features into an error-prevention system…

A second purpose of this book is also to demonstrate that Delphi is the best tool if you want to develop:

Good looking GUI applications
Cross-platform applications
Fast applications (for example data-processing, games)
Business and scientific applications

In parallel with all the above, we will compare Delphi with other languages (mostly C++, C#, R, Java, and Python) to see their merits and pitfalls and to reassure you that Delphi is THE language for you.
I will never ask you in this book to just believe me. I will always try to present hard evidence – scientific articles, proved concepts, read code examples, benchmark tests.

Even if the stakes are high, I promise it will NOT be a bumpy road. The learning curve might be steep in some places, but the book is peppered with code examples, case studies and diagrams that will explain the concepts we study.

Book layout

In the first book we have seen what kind of applications we can do with Delphi, then we dived quite deep into the Delphi language and object-oriented programming, and we saw what is safe to do and what is not, and most important, why. And in the background, we learned about high quality code, because in the end this is the ultimate goal if you want to more reach the Gods of programming.
The “safety first” concept will be strengthened in this book where continue to learn about code reliability, designing sound architectures and preemptive programming. All this, while studying in foreground advanced concepts such as debugging, memory management, proper exception-handling, etc. Oh boy… we will have fun!