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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 that’s 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.C vs. BASIC >>
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