hi all. I am a noob interested in developing for the mobile market, for example (iphone, android, wm7). Can any1 suggest a path i should follow to be able to produce programs in any of the above? I dont really know any languages at the moment, and i am in the process of giving c++ (another) go. Is this advisable? or should i say go and learn java or something? i know the iphone is using objective c, android uses java, and i think wm7 will be using visual c++ ? if i started by learning c++ would i be wrong in thinking that then i could go on to learn objective c and visual c++ without much of a transition? some questions i could use help with: 1)to develop on windows mobile i would have to learn visual c++? 2)is visual c++ different from c#? 3)is visual c++ similar to c++? sorry for a confusing post but i am confused myself, to sum up i basically would like to develop for as many people using mobiles as possible, what path should i take for this as a beginner? c++? java? objective-c? c# MSVC? Any help will be appreciated. thx in advanced.

thx for the swift reply swiftcoder :) I will take on what you have said and do some more research on the matter,

I agree with C# or Java.

The C# choice limits you to Windows Mobile devices, whereas Java gives you the "write once debug everywhere" syndrome.


As a "noob" with no programming experience, I would suggest you begin with PC development. Once you are comfortable with the development process and your skills are sufficient to actually create a game, you can move over to devices.

Theoretically you can write C# and have it work on the iPhone, thanks to Mono. There are a few existing games that do this.

However.. this weekend I started trying to get Mono working on my Mac, and it was a world of pain. The prebuilt Mono package doesn't seem to work with the Tao SDL bindings. At the moment I'm trying to fix it by building Mono from source.

But this isn't saying that Mono is any worse than usual. Multiplatform support is always "easy" in theory, but a PITA in reality.

Well looking at the bussiness side of things, i think the iPhone market is the only really viable market for an independent developer, and the iPhone runs Obj-C or C++, I would suggest you use C++.

Sure C# and Java are nice and high level, but if your talking about making mobile games ( on platforms which are already resoruce limited ) you'll be better off hitting a lower level high performance lanauge like C++.

Stay away from Obj-C, it's some arcane langauge carried over from the 80's which never caught on anywhere but Apple.

In addition, skills you learn from C++ will be viable in Java/C# also ( general programming patterns, reuse, class design etc.. all still pertient and the syntax is like 90% same between those lanaguages ).

Good Luck!

-ddn

Quote:Original post by swiftcoder

Quote:Original post by pinacolada
Theoretically you can write C# and have it work on the iPhone, thanks to Mono. There are a few existing games that do this.

Note that the iPhone SDK specifically forbids you from running interpreted code on the iPhone/iTouch.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Jan-06-1.html

They do AOT compilation to get around that restriction.

I thought the interperte code restriction only applies to downloaded code.

-ddn