“Coding in Delphi” by Nick Hodges

While the “Delphi Cookbook” is really a sampler, “Coding in Delphi” by Nick Hodges (https://leanpub.com/codingindelphi)  is the other extreme. It’s the full course. He covers less topics, but those topics he does cover, he covers in details.

“Coding in Delphi” intent

In his introduction Nick says the book is for “the Delphi developer that hasn’t quite yet made the leap over into the cool and amazing things that you can do with the latest versions of the Delphi language” and much of the content reflects that. He covers generics, anonymous methods, RTTI, dependency injection and unit testing.

“Coding in Delphi” content

Each topic has a generous mix of sales pitch (why you should use the feature), examples, and a splattering of best practice. Nick not only wants the reader to know that a feature exists, but how to use it, and how to use it well.

And it’s on the final point that I think a very strong agenda appears throughout the book. Nick, I suspect, hates bad code. The opening chapter is all about exception handling. It’s hardly a new feature “added into Delphi back at the very beginning with Delphi 1…” but it is where he starts and he quickly lays the boot in.

“Coding in Delphi” audience

So Coding in Delphi is a book designed to make existing Delphi programmers lift their game – both in terms of using new features, and using them well. It’s pitched blatantly at existing users