Becoming a Palm Programmer

[null_geodesic]

Hola,

I program for a living. I happen to be lucky enough to love programming, so not only do I use it to afford me a comfortable lifestyle, when I go home after a hard day of programming, I often program recreationally for fun. :-)

I first bought a Palm pilot, I don't know how many years ago. Too many. I loved my Pilot. Can't remember what I did with it... But it was definitely one of my favorite toys. Fun, useful, easy to use, powerful.

About 5 years ago I bought a Handspring Visor. I loved it. It was definitely one of my favorite toys. Fun, useful, easy to use, powerful.

Bought a Sprint Treo700p about a week ago. I love it. It's definitely one of my favorite toys. Fun, useful, easy to use, powerful. The day I bought it, I got lost driving around. The very first time I actually used my Treo, I stumbled across Google maps for the Treo and it got me unlost. I hadn't even yet made a call off the darn thing and it got me home in no time. Wow!!!

Ever since my Palm pilot days, I always wanted to write apps for my little PDA. Doesn't matter what kind of app. I really just wanted to tinker.

Three questions:
1. What would be a good way of starting out? I use Linux exclusively at home, but I'm forced to Windows at work. I assume I'll need a compiler, a set of libraries and header files, an API reference, and a short/gentle introduction on writing hello world. Some kind of emulator might be nice to shorten the edit cycle of write/compile/upload/run.

2. How difficult is it? Learning xlib sucked. The concepts were difficult. Learning OpenGL was difficult because it's such a huge topic. But some programming topics, like SDL or MFC were kind of nice. A little effort went a long way.

3. I heard that PalmOS might be discontinued shortly. Is that true? Sadly, I'm not sure I'd want to invest time into learning something that is deprecated (aside from the fact of being sick to my stomach because I happen to love the Palm PDA interface).

Thanks!
Pete

[jreagles16]

1) check out palms developer corners at palm source. I recommend siginning up there. Also, a good place to ask question about palm programming is a 1src forums. Most of palm developers are there and can help you with what compilers and etc.


3) I don't believe palm OS is going to be disconntiued just not updated for a while.

I recommend looking over a 1src and palm source for more info.