write apps for windows pda or palmOS pda in C?

[schmintan]

i want to begin to write apps for a PDA. it would give me an incentive to learn C. i have expirience in C# and visual basic, but i want to get to know C. would i be better to write programs for a windows based pda, or for a palm OS pda? which would be the most benificial, for any reason ( content id learn, portability, ease of coding........)
thanks all

[Ancient Dragon]

neither -- If you want to learn C then write console programs for the PC because PDA and Palm do not support the full set of C language. And because PC programs are a whole lot easier to debug.

[schmintan]

neither -- If you want to learn C then write console programs for the PC because PDA and Palm do not support the full set of C language. And because PC programs are a whole lot easier to debug.

i know that, but i want something that will give me a bit of incentive to get learning the language. messing with a pda might give me that incentive, to learn somethin new.just the way my head works

[Ancient Dragon]

If you want to learn C language then do not use hardware that only supports a subset of the language. For example you would learn next to nothing about file i/o or console programming because PDA and Palm do not have a console. They do not have environments, so getenv() is useless. They don't support the concept of current directory, so functions such as getcwd() and drive letters are useless. And these limitations are only the beginning.

If you are doing this only for your own personal achievement, then go ahead and do whatever turns you on, but later on you will probably regret it.

[Salem]

> then go ahead and do whatever turns you on, but later on you will probably regret it.
I agree, it's just another variation on people learning with say TurboC.

Learn the language first, then learn an implementation.