jreagles16

Hi,

I'm asking a favor from all of the 1src members. I would like to start to learn how to program for palm OS. I'm just about to finish highschool and was interested to do it as a hobby. Maybe someday become a pro. I consider myself fairly knowledgable on Palm OS and now want to take it to the next step and contribute.

1) I was wondering if there are any links or anything info that you could post to help me get started.

2) What language is good to start out with. I have heard pascal and pearl? But I thought pascal is becoming out dated and I have had people say start with c++( which sounds like the ultimate language) but does it really take five years to learn?

3) Also, I was wondering what were your feelings and thoughts when your first started? What did you start with and any other useful info?

4) First goal, I would love to learn how to skin and also create small little freeware tracker apps maybe in a couple of years.
Second goal, is to utlimately create games and really good reliable apps like Kinoma 4, Warfare Incorprated, skin UI, !NEW OS!( someday I would like to create a new Operating system that is free[like linux, but for palm]) and so on. Hopefullly in four years or so.

I have no knowledge and My goals are probably really high but I was wondering if you guys could help. I appreciate it a lot.


Thank you again for taking the time to help.



I love my E/E2 and treo 700p.

Tam Hanna

Hi,
I write a bit about programming in my Palm OS Blog - the link to TamsPAlm is in my signature....

If you dig through the Development category and also gobble up the editorials, you should have a good overview of the contents of my brain =)

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jreagles16

cool thank you very much. I'll look at it.

I love my mom

He he, I asked this same question on that beautiful Frebruary day long ago.... If you search you can dig up some threads containing the advice they gave me. Do you have any past experience in programming? It really reallly helps.

jreagles16

Nope none should I rethink this?


I love palm I'm always playing around with it. Dimrty beat me to one app I wanted to created the poision pill arg. But I probably would have been to late anyways.

How long does it take to learn a language is it like learnng a foregin language?

Thanks for the tip I'll search the threads I have been google searching and found some good starting points.

Thanks again for the help. Sorry if this is repetive question.

jreagles16

lol hey dimtry (if you don't mind me asking) I remember reading an interview about you and was wondering what language did you laern first cause you said pascal.


Well my question is do you recommend learning pascal first?

thanks for anyinfo.

dmitrygr

for palm first i did is pascal, as PalmPascal was onboard, and easy to learn with plenty of examples. In general I first learned C. MY father forced me to learn it back when I was six. :-)

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I love my mom

I learned PP first, then C. But I feel it would better to learn C first. BTW, Philllippe just released NaPP Pascal ARM compiler.

Learning a Programming language is nothing like a foreign language. It's much much easier. Shouldn't take you more than two or three weeks to get the basics of a language.

MikeB

I would recommend C++ as your goal, since that is probably what will be a good, dominant language by the time you are fully up to speed. Especially if you are wanting to get into programming highly graphic, responsive, performance applications (either on Palm or elsewhere). C++ (and related C#) are the tools of the professionals.

So, how do you get there from here? Many languages will give you the basics on programming and the thought process needed to "think like a programmer." I believe that you want to learn object oriented techniques early, since if you start with a procedural language (pure C, Pascal, or Basic), then you will have to unlearn some stuff. I heard it said that it would be easier and faster to teach someone programming from the ground-up in OO than trying to convert an "old-school" programmer over.

For the Palm, start in the Palm/Access Developer areas to see what's available.

I like OrbForms Designer/Architect, since it gives you a taste of OO programming with a C++-like environment, but doesn't bog you down with all of the environment details like Codewarrior or gcc would. And you can begin developing within a few weeks. So, the better you become with that, the less your learning curve would be to get to the professional environment. Plus it will tell you if you even like programming.

There are others that would have strong arguments for basic and pascal. Just my advice (I manage sw engineers): if you really do want to become a pro developer, those will not get you there as fast.

That's my 2c.

Nitron

There are so many different places you can start, it's ridiculous.
I started programming Palm by reading the O'Reilly book "Palm Programming" (but I already knew ANSI C) and then started messing with NS/Basic to get a feel for the environment. I recommend staying away from NS/Basic and I'm pretty sure Dmitry would agree. I then started up with C again, first with Codewarrior but now with PRC-Tools. OnBoardC is nice also, I guess, although it's somewhat limiting.
There are tons of places for information on Palm programming. There are multiple developers here and on the official palm-dev-forum. I just picked up O'Reilly's "Palm OS Network Programming" and it's quite good but assumes you already know the platform. Good luck.

Off-topic: Anybody notice that the tooltip on the says "command" and the says "shortcut"?

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potter

Yeah, I noticed: http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98817

holvoetn

So you did ... I bumped that thread

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jreagles16

Thanks for all the heplful info.


For a compiler what do you guys think of borland?

Cause I can get a free copy and was wondering what your inputs are on it.


Thank you very much for your help.

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COBOL was useless for me and it was the first touch with programming and i hated it.
Than i played with HTML, DHTML, XML, JAVA, JAVA SCRIPT, FLASH, MAYA etc...
But i love the graphic part like user interface design... im more an artist than a programmer.... but i do know a good basic of everything.

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Modnar

Yeah I though I would have a crack at programming and more so specifically palm programming as I going to be learning it in uni this year so i thought i would learn at least something now so its easier when I come to it. I'm looking into c++ (for palm) and visual basic (got the software for it from MS ) and using something like palm OS dev suite to make the prc's in the end when I get better at the language! But stick with c++ on windoze at the moment!

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