This short paperback gives the reader a quick tour of Delphi essentials.

Topics include, for instance, the IDE, Organisation of Delphi Projects, the most used Delphi Components, Graphics, mouse and keyboard events and databases Dbase and Paradox data. Towards the end, there is a useful summary of Object Pascal and a final chapter compares Delphi with Visual Basic, indicating, perhaps, that VB converts are the main target audience.

The text is straightforward and clear. Each topic is supported by simple example programs, which you work through as you read. I thought these relevant and helpful and I appreciated particularly the many well-presented screen shots. This is an elementary introduction, which demonstrates well how little code is required to program some quite complex Windows activities in Delphi.

Since Delphi 2 is out of date, nobody will buy this book to support a new installation. However it could help people starting out with Delphi 1.0, the only version which runs on Windows 3.1. Indeed, it must be by far the best 16 bit Object Oriented Visual Programming tool!

There could be many such people, observing that a fully functional copy of Delphi 1.0 has been given away recently by a popular computer monthly. However, there is a lot of tutorial material available now, on the net and elsewhere, so I really don't think this book would be worth buying.