You should not dismiss JavaScript, just because it is used for client side scripting. Nor should you compare it to Basic. It is far more sophisticated than that, and you can do some very neat things with JavaScript classes.
I think that we should keep an open mind about JavaScript not being the native language of the Pre. m68k C was not native either, but most of us never bothered with PNO. What will be a challenge for all of us is the platform shift. Pre applications will be a whole new paradigm. The successful ones will not look like anything like the palm OS apps that we have developed in the past. A lot of them will be far more trivial. Most of use came to Palm OS development from desktop environments, and a lot of our skills transferred over. But I do not think that will be the case with the Pre. It comes with an environment of its own, that is already out there. Personally I do not belong to the generation that grew up with mobile phones. I have never even had a data plan for my Treo 650. Learning about Facebook and Google Maps is going to be a whole new challenge for me. -----Original Message----- From: Doug Reeder [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 13 January 2009 07:58 To: Palm Developer Forum Subject: Re: Are you feeling special? Not yet. Program in JavaScript? Pffft, I'd rather program in BASIC. Since I doubt the built-in apps are written in JavaScript, but believe that they do use HTML and CSS as the GUI layer (via the DOM), I conclude one can write apps for WebOS in a reasonable language that integrate with the built-in apps and OS. Really, the question is, what is the application language, and how soon will they open it to developers? Were I in change of the project, I wouldn't allow C/C++ as an application language -- the programmer is forced to make decisions that are better made by the compiler or OS. But not everyone sees it that way. Java, or a Java-workalike such as Waba is a possibility. It could even be something like Ruby on Rails (though RoR itself is more of a server-side language). I am intensely interested in what Palm will offer developers -- we're told that 3rd party apps are full peers in the Dashboard. WebOS could be great for developers, but we need a lot more details, and actions speak louder than words. -- For information on using the ACCESS Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.access-company.com/developers/forums/
