The Golden Age of Palm OS: Insights from a Developer Who Witnessed It (aldweb)

Foreword

On a rainy Sunday, I decided to dive into some Palm OS games I had missed back in the day. Being a fan of strategy games, I was drawn to a demo of PalmPulus. It took a bit of time to get the hang of it, but the excellent manual (remember when those were a thing?) helped me through the basics.

It's an incredible fun game: Colonizing, conquering and building, until you are the last one standing.

Eager to play more than just the demo, I checked to see if the original website was still up. To my surprise, it was still online, showcasing PalmPulus and other applications by the same developer. Since the purchase links were broken due to those old marketplaces having gone the way of the dodo, I decided to reach out via email to see if there was any way to get the full version of the game.

Laurent ('aldweb') responded promptly and kindly provided me with the full version.

Connecting with a developer from Palm OS's Golden Age presented a valuable opportunity to ask him about the unique experiences and memories he had from that era. Here goes!

What was the main programming language you used when developing for Palm OS?

I developed mainly in Pascal, using successively 2 wonderful tools:

1/ HSPascal on Windows, and the magic is that this Pascal compiler is still online! Its developer, Christen Hill (from Denmark) was a genius and a so nice developer to help me getting started.

2/ And then, the wonderful onboard PPCompiler made by Philippe Guillot (from France) , another genius guy who became a real friend, and for which I still host the website, which let me code directly on the Palm device itself during my daily commuting. This is something I have always missed since then, on my android device, I cannot anymore develop directly with ease on the device itself.

I also used several other tools for managing resources (mainly graphical resources).

Was developing for Palm OS worth the effort for you in terms of:

- Financial return?

Palm development was a hobby for me, not my daily job.

I did not make a living with these sales, they just basically helped me cover my costs for having a powerful computer (once!) or for my website hosting.

- User appreciation and feedback?

Most of my Palm apps were freeware, with a real success for Speedy, which is a benchmark utility for PalmOS based devices.

Over the years, I was in touch with hundreds of great users, like you and me today ;-), and this was a real source of satisfaction and reward.

So, if I did not make a living with the few shareware I had developed, I got a wonderful time sharing with the users and being happy to see my tools or games used by so many people.

How large was the audience you were able to reach with your Palm OS games or applications?

I sold some 2200 low price shareware Palm apps over the years, about 5 to 10 per month.

But after you had payed the platform fees (Palmgear, Handango, Pdassi) and taxes, you would barely receive 50% of the sales price.

If you are still programming today, what would you say are the biggest differences between programming now and during the Palm OS era?

Yes, I am still programming. The biggest difference is now linked to the complexity and weight of platforms to install, tools to set, on a computer, certificates to sign apps, etc...

There is no more small, quick and efficient way for coding directly on the devices themselves.

What Palm devices did you own and use for development in the past?

I started with a Palm Vx, a Palm m505, then a Sony Clié. At the time, I mainly developed with HSPascal (on computer) and would test my apps on these devices. I started to switch to PPCompiler, but I was a little bit limited by the speed of characters input for coding.

I hopefully then moved to a Palm Tungsten C which was really the device I used for moving to PPCompiler, thanks to its huge speed (great for onboard compilation) and its integrated keyboard (for coding fast!).

I also own a Palm Treo 680 which was among the first smartphones (with Blackberrys...), and I have been using it until I really had to move to an android phone, by the time these devices and the iPhones became mainstream. I did not code too much on it, because the screen and the keys were much smaller than on the Tungsten C.

Do you still own a Palm OS device today?

Yes!

I have: Palm m505, Palm Tungsten C and Palm Treo 680.

Which of your applications was your biggest success on Palm OS, and why do you think it stood out?

I had two x1000 sales "blockbusters", SysInfo and iziBasic.

PalmPulus, which you like, was a fail, I merely sold some 70 copies! But, just like with all my other shareware, I could find it on "warez" sites... and my guess is that the cracked version was much more downloaded illegally than bought. The same comment should be somehow true also for all of my other Palm shareware...

How did you learn to program for the Palm OS API? Was it through books, official documentation, tech tutorials, newsgroups, or other resources?

I used all means that you mention!

And the main source of self-learning was with peers. I will only name two of them, but so many brought me so much knowledge:

- Philippe Charrière (known as "Palmipod", I also host his website from that time)

- Philippe Guillot has been a real mentor to me!

Programming for Palm OS involved managing the OS's limitations. What were the most significant technical hurdles you faced, and how did you overcome them?

You are right, there were memory limitations at the time.

For instance, HSPascal would let you have a code size of 64 Kb (this was bypassed very smartly in PPCompiler) and you had to limit yourself to this limit.

PalmPulus, which was developed in HSPascal and never ported to PPCompiler, reached this limit and I had to optimize a lot the source code to fit in these 64 Kb block.

iziBasic is dealing with all kinds of the block size limitations, I had to split the code in various modules which are controlled by a main one, this was really a great technical challenge, maybe the smartest one I ever had to deal with!

Dealing with Palm OS API was also a question of practice, would you stop developing for some time, and you would forget them... loosing time to find them back.

Did you consider PalmPulus to be completely finished, or were there additional features and ideas you wished to implement?

PalmPulus was the game I was most happy with... and it had very few users!

Since I had basically reached the Palm OS's limitations, and I did not feel like porting it to PPCompiler, it remained as a finished project.

To my knowledge, it has no bugs, runs smooth.

PalmPulus, which is my best game (meaning the one I had most fun developing and using myself), even though not so popular, should have deserved a real revamping, and porting to other platforms... I had plenty of ideas!

After the decline of Palm OS, which platform did you transition to, if any? What influenced your choice?

I for instance ported some of my apps: NekoCat and tinyBasic on android with B4A 10 years ago, and made them work until now despite all of android's annoying changes over time (and this is a nightmare for hobby developers). I just never made them available online for a series of reasons (Playstore cost and requirements, little interest to share elsewhere, no time to publish on my website...).

I developed several other apps, but my free time (no more train commuting) decreased drastically and I never really took the time since then to do anything serious.

What motivated you to start developing games specifically for Palm OS?

As a teenager, I discovered programming on the very first Pocket Computer, and this was a revelation for me. Using, and even coding my own programs for my own use, on a small device which you could carry with you everywhere was really fascinating to me. When Palm OS devices appeared, I found the exact same pleasure... except for - at first - the coding on the device itself. Thanks to many developers who created interpreters or compilers which could run on Palm OS devices, and ultimately PPCompiler's developer, I could enjoy my programming hobby wherever I was, with ease.

Looking back, what do you consider your biggest achievement as a Palm OS developer, and why?

I developed iziBasic (a pseudo-code Basic compiler), which is most probably my best technical achievement ever.

Together with ViziBasic (a visual IDE for iziBasic), itself coded in iziBasic, I felt that I had designed a programming experience that could be lived directly on these small and great Palm OS devices. And my greatest reward was to have many people starting programming with iziBasic in their first coding experience.

Dealing with all of Palm OS limitations and constraints was a real game for me.

This was some kind of final achievement for me: I was one of those able to develop a programming tool on a portable device which I could easily use wherever and whenever I wanted.

Since then, I have wanted to port it to Android or even Windows... I just never found the time and the energy to start this project... but I have kept having it in the back of my mind since more than 10 years!

Overall, as a hobby developer, I really had a great time programming on Palm OS devices. I miss this time!

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Want to know more about aldweb and the software he developed? Have a look on his website:

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The Golden Age of Palm OS: Insights from a Developer Who Witnessed It (aldweb) was published on 2024-09-10