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Python Painfully Ported to Palm; Plan is "Peer-to-Peer"

Posted by michael on from the proactive-PDA-programming dept.

An Anonymous Coward gave us the excuse for the above headline with this note: "Endeavors Technology has "successfully developed a highly optimized, open source port of Python to the Palm OS platform" It's called Pippy. The press release is also there. Nice!" Here's a story about the situation.

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. "P" problems by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 5

    Python Palm-platform ported!
    Poster perusing preliminary press-release ponders programming Perl-free PDAs.
    Preppie people prefer Python; Perl pedantic.

    Python port "Pippy" passable? Possible. PythonLabs prepared port perfectly.
    P2P Python programs particularly pleasant.

    (Poster pitches "P"-filled post pre- particularly pernicious puns.)

  2. Big Deal... by arc.light · · Score: 4

    I ported Linux to my Rio 500, and I'm routing IP between the USB port and headphone socket.

  3. Mobile script kiddies by Cyclopedian · · Score: 4
    This introduces what my science-fiction riddled brain thought up a while ago: mobile script kiddies with Palm devices walking around downtown, executing DOS attacks on company computers nearby, trashing the stock market and just generally making the free world suffer.

    Of course, I'm just wildly thrashing here. I don't care if this post gets modded up or down.

    -Cyc
    Apache 1.3.9b3 on palm.arm.body.org

    --
    /.'s 10 Millionth
  4. Great news for Palm by apirkle · · Score: 5
    This really is great news for the Palm, if for no other reason than the fact that it carries an open source license. As anyone who owns a Palm has noticed, there is a dearth of open and/or free software developed for it.

    The mindset of Palm programmers seems to be morbidly similar to that of most Windows programmers - develop an app, release it as Shareware with a nag screen and 30-day trial period, then try to make a few bucks by selling your software on PalmGear, so any project to further open development for the Palm is a big step forward.

    On the downside, it appears that it wants a device with at least 4MB of memory (Sorry III, V and 2MB Visor owners...) and it doesn't seem to have the ability to create standalone PRC files (thats a standalone application file).

    Some of the other alternatives for developing directly on your Palm (no PC necessary; these read MemoPad or DOC files with your source):

    Quartus Forth: A standalone Forth interpreter/compiler that is quite powerful; however, the free version can't compile PRCs, and it costs $70 to register.

    LispMe is a Scheme compiler, licensed under the GPL. Yummy. Now we just need a better way to write parentheses in graffiti...

    PocketC is an onboard C compiler, distributed as shareware.

    And, one musn't forget the ever-helpful Palm OS Programmers FAQ