More on Palm programming

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.