Purpose of These Lessons
 

Lesson 1    Delphi Basics Programming philosophy Environment Options Naming conventions Using F1 (Help) The 3 main Delphi Files (.dpr .pas .dfm) Right Mouse Clicking Modify your Toolbar Delphi Quirks Making your own Help Library Owner / Parent  Sender? Multitasking	Lesson 3     Databases What is a Database (DB)? Minimum Components it takes to use a DB Some Confusing things about Databases 3 ways to organize your Databases Multiple ways to access a Field Calculated Fields Database Watch Outs Searching a Database Letting the User See and Touch a Database SQL
Lesson 2     More Delphi Basics Object or Component? Property, Method, Event? Structure of Unit1.dfm file and Form1 Delphi and Windows95 (multitasking info) Project Options, Environment Options. Third Party Components from the WEB Installing New Components and Packages Global Variables Using BreakPoints to understand Delphi	Lesson 4     More Delphi Stuff Style, Messages, TypeCasts, and Frank's Ranting and Ravings

 

L5Examples

L5Examples.zip

10K

L5 Examples  CopyTblDBI, Messages, TblAndQuery

 

L4Examples

L4Examples.zip

21K

L4 Examples    BtnArray, DateHelp, SQL1, RunTimePopup, DynamicForm

My Interview with James Sandbrook 3/8/99

Purpose of these Delphi  Lessons

Hi,

I created these Delphi Lessons to help new Delphi programmers have a quicker way to learn Delphi.  Books give a very thorough explanation of topics, which is great for a Reference; but they are not always the quickest way to learn how to use Delphi.

It would help the new Delphi programmer to have more concise information that would tell him HOW, WHEN and WHY.
Book's tell you How, but they sometimes do not give the reader an overview of When and Why.

Also, a lot of example programs in books, require you to read the chapter to understand the example.
It would help to have self documented example programs.
It would also help to have an example program for each individual Component.  So, that if I wanted to learn how to use a ListBox, I would run the ListBox.dpr program.   And it would allow me to see how all the important Properties, Methods and Events are used, and what they do.

A lot of the time, an example program has most of the program setup, done in the Object Inspector's Properties at design time.  So there is very little code in the program.   This is great for the real world, but when I am trying to learn Delphi, I do not know what the default properties are yet; so, when I look at the example I don't know what Properties were changed.  So, in my opinion,  all example programs should set the design properties in code; or have comments explaining what was setup at design time.

I decided to try and give programmers more learning tools:

    1) Delphi Lessons (in HTML format) that give you:
            - Power Programming Tips
            - How, When, Why?
            - Comments, Watch Outs, and Delphi Quirks
            - Short explanations of features and functions
            - Lists of:
                 - Conversion Functions
                 - Important Component Properties
             - A synopsis of features and functions

    2) Library Help files of:
            - Simple Code Snippets and Help Text files.

    3) Simple self documented  Example Programs, that don't require a book.

So, I decided to try and make some learning aids that would have helped me, when I first started trying to learn Delphi.

You learn so much more from a good example program, that you can add to and modify.  I don't understand why there aren't a ton of simple, well done example programs available to everyone.