Comments on: Why Symbian OS Development is Very Difficult

By: Antony Pranata

Antony Pranata — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 15:39:52 +0000

@rajdeep: Welcome to the world of Symbian OS. This has been a question to many new developers, where do I start. Firstly, I would like to recommend you visiting the web sites of two most popular platforms for Symbian OS, i.e. S60 (http://forum.nokia.com) and UIQ (http://www.uiq.com). Download the UIQ and try the examples.
Don’t forget… a good book about Symbian OS is highly recommended. There are some good books out there (http://www.symbian.com/developer/books/index.html).
Good luck.

By: rajdeep

rajdeep — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:25:42 +0000

Hi…I have just come out of college and I am very curious to learn this Symbian OS…but i dont know where to start from???Can anybody suggest me a website or book which gives a very easy way to learn symbian….thanks

By: Antony Pranata

Antony Pranata — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:13:32 +0000

@nyamga: I agree with you. I have tried Carbide.c++ Developer Edition in the last couple of days. My first impression, it runs so slow in my machine (I think that is because of Java things)…
About UI interface, it is not as good as Microsoft or Borland’s products. However, they have made some improvements (if we compare to any previous Symbian OS IDE’s).

By: nyamga

nyamga — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 03:10:38 +0000

It seems me Carbide.c++ Pro and Developer Edition is not good tool yet. I use it. But always disturb me. Many UI properties is setted manually. It seems any way to make easy its. For example listbox properties! I spend many time to configure find pane, scrollbar e.t…

By: Antony Pranata

Antony Pranata — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 01:13:44 +0000

@shizane: If you don’t have experience in C++, I would recommend using a simpler approach, for example Flash Lite or Python. You can start from http://forum.nokia.com. Flash Lite or Python is much simpler than C++ or Java.
If you want to try C++ development, then I would recommend “Developing Series 60 Applications: A Guide for Symbian OS C++ Developers (Nokia Mobile Developer)” book from Leigh Edwards, et. al.

By: shizane101

shizane101 — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:52:26 +0000

@Antony: I’ve recently purchased a Nokia N80. I’m obsessed with this phone and would like to explore the possibility of developing my own programs. I have no programming experience with C++ or any language for that matter. However, I have a lot of ambition and free time on my hands. Can you recommend the best books (websites too) I can buy to learn the basics to get started?

By: Antony Pranata

Antony Pranata — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:50:15 +0000

@Marco: Yes you’re right, since Symbian 9, leave is implemented as exception (this includes S60 3rd too). This blog was actually posted before the first Symbian 9 SDK is released to public.

By: Marco

Marco — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 14:03:02 +0000

@Antony and Naurava: I’ve read in a UIQ forum that when C++ exceptions were introduced in UIQ 3.0, Leaves have been reimplemented as actual exceptions instead of long jumps. Are you sure they didn’t apply the same change to S60 3rd edition? It would make sense…

By: Antony Pranata

Antony Pranata — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 15:01:08 +0000

@Naurava: Yes, you are right. We should not mix exception and leave. That will just make confusion.

By: Naurava_kulkuri

Naurava_kulkuri — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:07:54 +0000

Also, if you are interested on architectures and structures, you will notice that Symbian code isn’t the cleanest stuff there is.

Or what would you think of using enumerations to do essentially what RTTI is supposed to do? Or that there are enumerations dwelling in the global namespace (this has been cleaned quite a lot in the recent years, though).

You also will notice that the build system is very unfriendly. Take a look to the Symbian system folders and you’ll notice that having simultaneous projects could be a no-no since your resources could be replaced during some other compilation (they are there with their real names) and you actually could link the wrong resources to your software.