Should I learn how to develop on Symbian OS? [closed]

Answer 1

Symbian is a little different to what you may be used to perhaps, but it is a stable platform (200+million devices out there) and the tools are mature.

Carbide is very good especially if you've used eclipse before.

A first place to look before you start Symbian programming is here: http://descriptors.blogspot.com/

Descriptors are Symbians strings. They're very efficient, however a little different to many other string implementations.

Answer 2

Have a look at NS Basic/Symbian OS. It provides a Visual Basic like environment. It's pretty easy to use and gets you around a lot of the problems that Symbian OS causes. Apps will run on both S60 3rd Edition and UIQ3 devices without change.

http://www.nsbasic.com/symbian

Answer 3

The reputation of Symbian OS C++ development as being unfriendly (to say the least) is undeniable. On the other hand, the platform is also extremely powerful.

If you only want to code personal programs or little freewares/sharewares, another platform could be better suited to you. If you are trying to find an operating system that can sustain a professional career in software development, Symbian, J2ME and, to a lesser extent, linux are your best bets.

The documentation and tools of Symbian are evolving with every new versions. Using Symbian OS C++ is getting incrementally easier (but it still has a long way to go).

A little relevant advert : Symbian Press latest effort to introduce developers to the Symbian ecosystem.

http://www.quickrecipesonsymbianos.com

It can be used as an 80 hours step-by-step course.

Answer 4

I worked on the OS development side of Symbian OS for a little over a year. The general feel of the system is that it is a bug-ridden undocumented piece of crap. The only positive thing I can say is that the OS code itself follows internal coding standards relatively well. The standard CodeWarrior IDE was garbage (although Carbide, which came out as a replacement recently, is pretty decent but the free version was very barebones and several versions behind, at least some time ago). The emulator was barely usable - it ran slow, differed from the actual device and crashed or hung often.

If you want to develop on Symbian, be prepared for a lot of trial and error because there is almost no documentation available, even on the core concepts of the environment. As a fictional example, the basic documentation for the method "JiggleThingy()" would be "Jiggles the thingy". Of course, there were many occasions where the implementation was quite different from the documentation, too.

An aquaintance ran a mobile software development company in Asia for a few years and developed for pretty much all of the platforms. He told me that Symbian was the worst of the lot - it caused far more headache than any other mobile platform.

This is all about C++ development. Developing for Symbian using Java offers so limited functionality that I have not heard of anyone that actually has done it.

Answer 5

I've done some Symbian C++ application development, it is quite difficult to get your head around, and it's particularly hard if (like me) you have to switch between multiple development environments (Palm, though not so much now, Windows Mobile, desktop Windows, THEOS, Linux, HTML/CSS).

But I've heard the "no documentation" thing raised in a lot of places and I didn't find that to be true at all. In some cases, there was too much documentation, and what was there was too complicated for a newbie. Sample code was the same - there's loads of it, but it's hard to split out which parts of the code control which feature.

I know that once you get into it, though, it's quite straightforward to build some pretty impressive apps. There's a good community at Forum Nokia (mentioned above) and I get some inspiration from talking to some of the devs they wheel out at the Smartphone show in London. If you can spare the time, it'd be worth your while going down there to have a look as you're not too far away, it's on at the end of October. Not a massive show by any means, but worth a look.

Answer 6

Just as a heads-up, we try to avoid subjective questions, as per the FAQ

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is a place for questions that can be answered!

Now you are new, so it's OK :)

In terms of your question, I would say:

• Who gives a crap if its hard, if you want to do something, roll the sleeves up and do it, the harder it is, the more rewarding it will be!
• I'm not a Symbian OS dev (once I get a PDA I may get into .NET CF), but I would say that mobile apps are really starting to pick up, many apps are now being released with a mobile app to keep people connected and using your software. The more people using it = more business!
• Looking at the Wikipedia page here I would say there are plenty of options for IDE's and platforms to actually developing against, awesome!