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Related Resources • A Beginner's Guide to Delphi Programing.TOC

Welcome to the first chapter of the FREE online programing course:
A Beginner’s Guide to Delphi Programming.
What is Borland Delphi? Where to download a free version, how to install and configure it.

  What is Borland Delphi?
Borland Delphi is a sophisticated Windows programming environment, suitable for beginners and professional programmers alike. Using Delphi you can easily create self-contained, user friendly, highly efficient Windows applications in a very short time - with a minimum of manual coding.

Delphi provides all the tools you need to develop, test and deploy Windows applications, including a large number of so-called reusable components.
Borland Delphi, in it's latest version, provides a cross platform solution when used with Borland Kylix - Borland's RAD tool for the Linux platform.

Delphi's roots lie in Borland's Turbo Pascal, introduced in the mid-1980s. Object Pascal, the object-oriented extensions to Pascal, is the underlying language of Delphi. The Visual Component Library, or VCL, is a hierarchy of Object Pascal objects that allow you to design applications. A better way of describing Delphi is an Object Pascal-based visual development environment.

Delphi editions
The latest version of Delphi (in the moment of writing this chapter), version 6, comes in three different editions:

• Delphi Personal - makes learning to develop non-commercial Windows applications fast and fun. Delphi 6 Personal makes learning Windows development easy with drag-and-drop visual programming.
• Delphi Professional - adds the tools necessary to create applications with the latest Windows® ME/2000 look-and-feel. Dramatically enhance functionality with minimal code using the power and flexibility of SOAP and XML to easily integrate Web Services into client-side applications.
• Delphi Enterprise - includes additional tools, extensive options for Internet. Delphi 6 makes next-generation e-business development with Web Services a snap.

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