SIgning Off For Now

Well, if anyone has been following this blog, they realize that I've been away for a while. A matter of priorities. This forum is not forgotten, but just neglected.

As a result, I'm going to have to call it a day, but with the possibility that I'll jump back in sometime in the future.

There have been a few circumstances and decisions that have affected my decision.
1) In frustration with the wait for a PalmOS product that I really feel good about buying (and the serious bugs and complaints about the T5), I made the decision to buy a Toshiba e405. I got a reconditioned one for $150. It's not exactly the most full-featured and powerful PPC out there, but it's a chance for me to take a look at this mysterious (to me) PPC world and find out what it's like. In the meantime, PalmSource and PalmOne can hopefully get their act together and I'll be back later. (Assuming I don't become too enamoured with PPC, of course.)
2) I've decided that my "nuts and bolts" techie days are over, except if and when necessary at work, which is rarer and rarer these days for me. As a result, Java/SuperWaba are really not the best languages for me to develop in if I have a simple project. Something like NSBasic probably makes much more sense, if I ever get the time, need or desire to pursue it more. Don't know what's available in the PPC world yet for easy and inexpensive development, but I'm sure I'll figure that out in time.
3) I haven't gotten much feedback, and my site hit monitoring has stopped working. No sense in figuring out another system to measure visits at this point. Don't really have any idea if anyone is even reading this at all, or getting anything out of it.
My hope is that just sitting around in it's current form will be useful to newbies occassionally. For that purpose, I'll leave it up as long as blogger.com accomodates.
4) I've got a lot of time to waste getting acquanted with my new Toshiba after it arrives, so there's no point in trying to program right now.
and Finally
#5) SuperWaba has had a new version released, with more to come including a GUI builder. Nice, I'm sure, but more to learn.

Final conclusion,
Programming on the Palm is a bit of a challenge, especially if you want to do "real" programming. With Basic, it seems pretty reasonable, but any programming takes time. And especially if you are using a GUI or interfacing to just about anything. It can be worth it to some, but not to a dabbler like me until I have a real need for a program that is not available unless I write it. (Even then, I might put a bid out on one of those rent-a-programmer sites.)

I think SuperWaba is definitely worth a look for serious programming if you know Java syntax, and are willing to dig in patiently even when there is basically no support except for the very limited help for newbies in the forum or web site.

NSBasic or C coding probably makes more sense for the serious programmer. And the hobbiest will like something like NSBasic, iziBasic, tiny basic, etc.

One of these days something easy will come out that can handle serious code and performance requirements also.

Thanks to everyone/anyone that actually visited and read this blog. If you do visit and enjoyed it, please do say hi to me at bobr[AT]mobileread.com (convert to a real email address by changing "[AT]" to "@". I used that to avoid some spam.

God bless. Goodbye!