The Palm programming experiments are moving along nicely. I’ve successfully created a “Hello, World” application just to get used to the development environment and such. My initial impression still stands: Writing a program for the Palm is very similar to writing to the Windows API. We’ll see if that impression holds as I continue my experiments. I’m starting on a “real” project and will report back as I learn things.
As I said (see November 3), I’m doing my initial experiments using Metrowerks CodeWarrior version 7.0. It’s a little strange going back to C after writing Delphi programs for the last two years. I could go with a Pascal development environment, and I may yet decide to do that. The GNU PRC-Tools package targets the Palm, and I assume one could use the gcc Pascal compiler rather than the C compiler. I read somewhere that Free Pascal will target the Palm, but haven’t been able to confirm that. Finally, there’s PocketStudio from Pocket Technologies–a commercial Pascal-based Palm development environment. I’ve downloaded their trial version, but have not yet tried it out. At almost $400, I’d need a real good reason (like a paying project, or maybe just a real strong aversion to C) before I could justify switching from the Metrowerks environment. My toy budget just isn’t all that big these days what with the back room conversion and all.