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NS Basic/Palm
Sun Sep 24, 2000 - 2:25 PM EDT - By Scott Hanselman
Table of Contents
> NS Basic/Palm C vs. BASIC Dev Environ. & Concl...
Programming for the Pilot isn't the easiest thing to do. In this
new world of RAD (Rapid Application Development), Visual Basic, Java, and
quick prototypes, programming in C on a device with just a few MBs of memory
can prove challenging. When I wrote GlucoPilot, my Palm Diabetes
Manager, I was surprised at the cramped feeling I had while programming
for the Palm OS in C. I had just 11K of heap at the time and 2K stack.
For the non-technical, that's not a lot. It was like programming
in DOS again or on a Mac in 1984. But thats life on a tiny PDA,
right? Wrong!
Description
The NS BASIC Corporation first came out with a basic development environment
for the Apple Newton in 1994, and they've since released NSBasic/CE and
now NSBasic/Palm. Nice and Smart Basic/Palm is sure to establish
a strong presence as a powerful alternative development environment.
NS Basic/Palm is a complete BASIC development environment for Palm OS
devices. NS Basic/Palm provides a full, modern implementation of BASIC,
with proper subroutines, user defined data types and no line numbers. The
development environment runs on a Windows desktop. Programs can be tested
using the POSE emulator, which runs on Windows, or on the device itself.
NS Basic/Palm produces standard Palm .prc files as executables. Here
are its features:
Easy to use, standard and structured BASIC
Over a dozen screen objects
Create buttons, fields, popups and more
Serial Communications
Math and trigonometric function support
Produces standard Palm apps
Royalty-free Runtime
Built in database support
Test on the Palm OS Emulator
Sample code
150 page Handbook
Available for $99.95 USD directly from NS BASIC Corporation's website or
by calling 1-888-NSBASIC.
There are a number of Pilot development environments available, including
Java, CASL (Compact Application Solution Language), and the GCC C programming
environment. NS Basic, however, includes the simplicity of the BASIC
programming language, and a visual development environment.Next Page: C vs. BASIC >>
