ariel2 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Monks,

I've recently had a great idea for an application that would run on a mobile device (i.e. cell phone or PDA). After some asking around, it seems that I would have to write this application for both WinCE and Palm to be able to cover most mobile devices. (and I'm told that Palm is more prevalent) As a long time perl devotee, I would very much like to use it to write this application. A quick search turned up this node, which doesn't sound too promising. Has the situation gotten any better? Should I accept the fact that I'll have to use another language?

your opinions are appreciated,

-ariel

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Mobile Application Development
by scmason (Monk) on Sep 23, 2005 at 19:26 UTC
    I looked into this in great detail for a recent application I had to write for a variety of smart devices. It seems that Perl is not an option. here are my recomendations:

    If you want it to you want it to run on both WinCE and Palm your best bet is SuperWaba which is a Java-sort-of-thing. While not ideal, you get the following benifits:

    1.Cross platform
    2.Somwhat sane develoment platform
    3.Do not have to use Microsoft development tools (see #2).

    If the above arguments did not convince you to not do what is listed below, read on

    Another alternative is to try Visual Basic .NET (never look at MFC, it will crack your brain in two from the pure idiocy of its design). VB can suck too, but if you couple it with the the addons from openNETcf.org it isnt so bad. openNETcf is a "central repository for information and shared-source projects specifically targeting the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework".

    Good luck.

    "Never take yourself too seriously, because everyone knows that fat birds dont fly" -FLC
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Re: Mobile Application Development
by ickyb0d (Monk) on Sep 23, 2005 at 19:40 UTC

    I've actually had some experience developing applications for cell phones. I've only used J2ME for those applications. Basically it's a smaller version of Java: Java MicroEdition. I found the language extremely easy to pickup since I had already done some work in Java already. There's also a Java Wireless Toolkit that can be VERY helpful in simply debugging and creating programs.

    Although a majority of PDA's, Cell Phones and Mobile devices come with J2ME; there are still some devices that do not support it. So that might limit your compatability. If it's just going to be a small application (like on a cell phone) I would recommend J2ME. I'm not sure if you need all the bulk (that I assume comes with) Win CE.

[reply]
      Uhm, WinCE/PocketPC devices are not supported with J2ME, and they do make up a larger portion of the PDA market than is being given credit here. Additionally ( and unfortunatley) is is growing on the 'smart phone' market.

      Previous versions had Sun Java support, but that was years and years ago. This information is available from the supported device list

      "Never take yourself too seriously, because everyone knows that fat birds dont fly" -FLC
[reply]
        Upon doing some quick web browsing. I was able to find some Pocket PC's with J2ME and MIDP support. But I do agree with you that J2ME is meant for mostly phones and a limited amount of other mobile devices; although it might not be geared towards PDA's. It seems like it's getting hard and harder to classify everything with all of the new technologies and (as you said) 'smart phones' coming out.
[reply]

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