Hello people.
I've been programming for about 5 years, and I'm quite young in age. I just love programming so much. Ever since I tried a program at school called Scratch, which uses a basic language in the form of GUI blocks. In my life, I would like to code a PDA
I know it's far-fetched, and I would have to become much more advanced. I would really love to have some sort of handheld device with a keyboard in my pocket, I would take it out, and boot it up, and have a command line show up(Maybe GUI), displaying 'Welcome to blablabla' or something. And then I type in commands or navigate via the keypad to achieve things. I probably sound extremely childish...
Has anyone had experience in writing a handheld device before? If anyone has, could that person please give a overly-simplified overview on how to achieve this? I'm sure it's much much harder than it looks, I would probaly have to become 30 years more advanced in this to even hope to achieve coding a PDA. Thanks in advance.

Josh Lee
Programmer - Owner of JLSoftware

Hi Josh,

Do you already have a PDA you'd like to program?

With FreePascal it is getting easier to program PDAs, especially if the PDA runs Linux. I have posted some minimal FreePascal distributions on this page:
http://www.turbocontrol.com/helloworld.htm

Those distro contains the compiler and everything you need to easily compile and test a simple program. With Linux you might be able to compile directly on the PDA, and even use fpGUI if you need a simple GUI program. For WinCE I only have a cross-compile fpGUI distro available at this time though it should be possible to compile directly on a WinCE device.

Josh Lee wrote

In my life, I would like to code a PDA

The big question is whether you mean that you'd like to take a lifeless PCB, possibly that you've designed and built, and get it to do useful stuff, or simply to take a PDA that somebody else has brought to life and write software on top of it.

The first case is obviously the more difficult and it eventually includes the second. It's also more rewarding, provided that by the time you complete studying and building up your experience that it's still relevant.

Josh Lee wrote

In my life, I would like to code a PDA

What does PDA stand for in this case?

I know only Personal Digital Assistent.

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote

What does PDA stand for in this case? I know only Personal Digital Assistent.

I don't suppose hes in Epidural anesthesia, which is called PDA ("Periduralan?sthesie" ->
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periduralan%C3%A4sthesie) in Germany, so regarding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pda the most likely hit is "Pitch detection algorithm" ->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_detection_algorithm.

-Michael

I would first want to code a pre-built PDA that already has an OS, then eventually as I learn enough, code an empty one from scratch. (And maybe even build one - Although that would take a lot of knowledge into hardware, I guess)

Josh Lee
Programmer - Owner of JLSoftware

What does PDA stand for in this case? I know only Personal Digital Assistent.

Sorry, PDA was the only name I could think of to describe this - I mean a small, handheld device with a keyboard,with that you organise data via command line or a GUI. Similar to this, which was my childish inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_2gUjbJpw0&feature=youtube_gdata

Josh Lee
Programmer

Josh Lee wrote

I would first want to code a pre-built PDA that already has an OS, then eventually as I learn enough, code an empty one from scratch. (And maybe even build one - Although that would take a lot of knowledge into hardware, I guess)

In that case see links posted in this thread, and look at recent threads "Handheld development" and "Android NDK".

Working on the "bare metal" is related to embedded system implementation. Most people these days use a pre-existing kernel, but there will always be market for people who understand how to port one of those to new hardware or- in extreme cases- write one from scratch. Been there done that (Modula-2 on top of ROMs written in assembler).

Josh Lee wrote

Sorry, PDA was the only name I could think of to describe this

Ok, PDA is the right word. The problem was that you should have specified that you want to write the entire software system of the PDA, not just a software running on top of an existing PDA with an existing operating system. For the later case see for example here:

http://wiki.freepascal.org/Windows_CE_Interface#Gallery

Josh Lee wrote

In my life, I would like to code a PDA I know it's far-fetched, and I would have to become much more advanced. I would really love to have some sort of handheld device with a keyboard in my pocket, I would take it out, and boot it up, and have a command line show up(Maybe GUI), displaying 'Welcome to blablabla' or something. And then I type in commands or navigate via the keypad to achieve things. I probably sound extremely childish...

Josh, don't sell yourself short! You already are way ahead of many.

My advice is to stick with Lazarus/FPC as they will help you get where you want to go faster.

Just keep learning!

First of all, software over it. And if I become advanced enough, write one from scratch.

Josh Lee
Programmer - Owner of JLSoftware

Thank you, Doug. I will. I feel motivated :)