Can I get a recommendation for a book or document that explains how to write programs that use the component libraries WITHOUT using a form designer? Every book that I look at starts out with dragging and dropping controls onto a form, and then augmenting code that is generated by a form designer. I'm more comfortable writing all the code myself. Thanks.
It's hard to recommend a book these days for what you want.
For straight Windows API programming, Petzold's classic book is likely the practical way to go about it but, it requires you have some knowledge of C. Augment Petzold's book with the Advanced Windows book from Jeffrey Richter and you'll reach a reasonable level of competence in a reasonable amount of time.
For Pascal and pure API, the only book I can think of is Dave Jewel's "Polishing Windows", it's an excellent book but, it is really old. The examples cater to Windows 95 (or 3.1, I don't remember). If you use that book, you'll have to tailor/port/adapt to the current API which is not really difficult but, it means that in many cases you don't have examples that work directly as presented. One feature of Dave Jewel's book that is worth mentioning is that he strongly emphasizes program design and implementation _without_ using global variable which is very desirable as an implementation methodology and as a programming skill.
The other thing that must be mentioned is that, the current "methodology" of using forms and OOP gives the programmer close to instant gratification, which is quite appealing. Programming pure API doesn't initially come close to instant gratification but, as you write more and more programs, you create a pool of code you can reuse and customize for a particular objective. Initially, there is a lot more effort involved but, in the long run, you end up with much better programs and, the total time/effort spent while being somewhat greater with pure API, produces noticeably better results.
If you don't mind the initial greater effort, I encourage you to program to the API. I do.
HTH.