Let's Talk Developer Topics

[Andy Sjostrom]

About 40% of Pocket PC Thoughts visitors are developers according to the <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5540">"Random User Survey #3"</a>. From my developer horizon, that is very encouraging and I would really like that number to stay high. What makes me a bit confused, though, is the relatively low number of posts in the DEVELOPER forum and the low number of replies to front page developer news. Take a look at <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=11">the numbers</a>! The average of replies is about one (1) and half of the posts are not replied to at all.<br /><br />Being the resident developer on the Pocket PC Thoughts team, my question to you is: what developer topics would you like to see more of? More hard core coding discussions? Source code? Platform discussions? Game development? Let's talk!

[Rirath]

E) All of the above, please. :)

[albsilva]

Hi Andy,
In spite of being an eVB developper, I find for several years that ppcthoughts it's the best site to be 'tuned' for what's going on on this business... about developper issues, I visit devbuzz, so sometimes before reading about some question here, I have already read it on devbuzz, but I find interesting the idea to have a section to let us know what's up on other dev sites, some known, others not known at all.
About dev discussion forums... well to be honest, I watch regurarly MS newsgroups, from time to time devbuzz forums and web search when needed... interesting would be to have a 'pocketcps dev search', that would be the google of WinCE developpers!

Best regards, and sorry to not encorage you very much... :roll:
Alberto Silva
Portugal

[Venturello]

Ditto. E) all of the above. Would love to see more hard core coding discussions, but then the dev forums here are slow (almost useless). Seems us developers come here for news, and go for forums elsewhere (devbuzz, pocketpcdn, ms news). So it would be nice to keep the site's spirit of general industry news and opinions, but with more dev content thrown in.

That is, without flooding the general interest topics which are makes this site so good.

I would like to see more interesting dev stuff but the site is great as it is. Would I like to see another site geared toward dev's? No, the team is great as it is.

Personally, I would LOVE to see source code and open source code projects, since it would benefit me a lot at this stage - there is very little open source code for ppc's out there (I am into eVC - eVB is a slow toy).

Just my 2c's, thanks guys for the best in ppc news out there.

[GregWard]

To be honest I don't think of going to the Dev Forum! So I would only really see items posted on the main page.

For me Development is only one of the things I do. More often than not when I am developing it's using Delphi for the PC World. If I am developing a mobile solution - it's normally Palm based (NS Basic). The very things I dislike about Palm (personally) look VERY different when - as I would be - you're looking to develop an app to collect research data. When you need several thousand devices, £60 for a Palm Zire starts to look very attractive!

Having said that - rest assured when I am doing a PPC dev job PPCThoughts Dev forum will be the first place I'll look!!!! :D

[Perry Reed]

I'm a developer only so far as that I have the Visual Studio .Net (Everett) beta with the included Smart Device plug-in and I've played around with it. My technical skills aren't real deep, especially when it comes to coding for PPC, so my preference would be for more beginner-level articles.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but it might help other wannabe developers get started, which would be a good thing, right?

[BigCanoe]

I always come here for news, I didn't even think to look for development discussion. I have written several applications in eVB and am struggling to get up to speed in C# for PocketPC at this time.

[Pony99CA]

I'm a developer only so far as that I have the Visual Studio .Net (Everett) beta with the included Smart Device plug-in and I've played around with it. My technical skills aren't real deep, especially when it comes to coding for PPC, so my preference would be for more beginner-level articles.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but it might help other wannabe developers get started, which would be a good thing, right?
That sounds like a great idea, as long as they aren't too basic. In other words, don't try to teach programming in general; try to teach programmers about the Pocket PC platform.

Steve

[Perry Reed]

That sounds like a great idea, as long as they aren't too basic. In other words, don't try to teach programming in general; try to teach programmers about the Pocket PC platform.


Exactly! Just the platform-specific stuff, like the PPC object model or SQLCE, things like that.

[Mike Temporale]

Take a look at the numbers (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=11)!

The replies are small, but the views sure are high.

[blazingwolf]

I'm new to developing for the PPC. I think it would be a great help to have a newbie section like Grabaclue mentioned. :D I go to the developer forum everytime I come to the "Thoughts" site but I don't usually put things in because I am still trying to understand what people are talking about. :?

[johncj]

I would like to see more Random User Surveys. No, seriously, part of the reason I like this site is that it lets me know what the bleeding edge users are interested in. Knowing the demographics of the users here is very helpful.

[Hugh Nano]

Some of the respondents may have been hobbyists like myself who code only in our (very infrequent) spare time. Also (just slightly off-topic), there needs to be an easier way to view the results of a poll that doesn't really apply to you without voting. I know you can do it by clicking "View Results" once you go to the thread, but you can't do it from the front page (which some readers never get past!). People like to see the results of polls, and if they don't have an easy way to view the results without voting, they are liable to just vote at random, thus skewing the results of the poll.

[Jimmy Dodd]

As a developer for ten+ years (the last four with CE) I find that our dev forums here at PPCT are inhabited by mainly lurkers. There isn't a lot of discussion which leads me to post questions elsewhere instead. I'd love for that to change.

More dev articles would be nice. I'd even be willing to write some if there are some topics others would be interested in. I'm mainly a C++ developer, although lately C# with .NET and .NET CF has been getting a workout.

[Pony99CA]

Another suggestion I have would be to have many (most?) articles geared toward using the freely available tools. Requiring Visual Studio .NET, for example, will probably cut way back on the usefulness for those of us who don't do CE programming for a living.

I have Visual C++ 4.1 (I "lost" my copies of 5 and 6), the eMbedded Toolkit and Windows 98 SE, so I can't even use the Pocket PC emulator.

Steve

[petevick]

Hi,
I tend to find most developers, certainly eVB tend to hang out on devbuzz, and the newsgroups are pretty busy. Since the demise of pocketprojects, devbuzz appears to be by far the busiest.
I tend to visit here more for news and to lurk, but I will pay more attention to the forums in future

Pete

[Warwick]

I dont come here for developer info, and I rarely have time to look at the forums. The front page is my only interest, adding developer forums would be a waste of time in my opinion.

My advicve would be stick to what works, leave the developer forums to the developer sites. Keep the news flowing like you have for the last successful year, and keep up the fantastic work.


Professional programmer.

[markvan]

Andy,

What is posted on the front page is what I mainly look at. I come here for my daily update on the PPC world, and starting development with C# and .NET CF I'm always delighted to read the development articles.

So just keep up the good work you've been doing so far. Though I may not reply much, I definitely appreciate the effort you put in.

Cheers
Mark

[twowheels]

As most of the other sites tend to focus on eVB/eVC, I would like to see more info on C# and .NET CF development in particular, especially as I think this will be the main platform for Pocket PC development longer term - certainly in the business sector.

I agree that covering the news/views angle is sufficient here on Thoughts, as this is the main focus of the site. However Andy I always read your posts with interest and would be happy to see more in-depth articles.

[SassKwatch]

I don't know how typical my site visit habits are, but 9 times out of 10, I wind up in the forums via a 'Discuss This Story' link from an article on the 'Front Page'. By the time I get done browsing those discussions, that's about all the time I have. There is life beyond gadgets.....at least I remember having one once upon a time. :)

BTW, my visit habits here are almost exactly opposite of those I had at BrightHand back when I buzzed thru there with some regularity. In that case, I would hardly give the 'Front Page' more than a cursory glance and almost always went straight into the forums.

[ThomasC22]

I agree with everyone else that I'd like to see more developer discussion here. The problem with many of your posts (as far as replying is concerned) is that they are often tutorials that work which means I have no need to ask questions about them and nothing to say other than "That's neat", so usually I say nothing...

As for my specific interest, I've been trying to get a handle on the .NET CF in my spare time (I REALLY, REALLY like C# now) so that is mostly what I'd be interested in.

[SassKwatch]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but it might help other wannabe developers get started, which would be a good thing, right?
I like that idea. I've done some dev work in Access with VBA, but it's pretty limited.

A while back I got a notion to look into developing some coding skills for handheld devices. So, I started poking around various places just to see if I could get a handle on what the most popular dev platform might be currently.

I came away from that investigation pretty confused. It *seemed* as though eVB was probably the most used platform currently, but .NET CF was very close to being the 'Next Big Thing'. And I couldn't determine whether the skills one might build working in eVB would translate well to .NET. So, I wound up doing neither.

From that perspective, I would certainly appreciate articles offering some 'big picture' perspective on the dev world and where it seems likely to be headed.

[Hugh Nano]

I don't know how typical my site visit habits are, but 9 times out of 10, I wind up in the forums via a 'Discuss This Story' link from an article on the 'Front Page'. By the time I get done browsing those discussions, that's about all the time I have. There is life beyond gadgets.....at least I remember having one once upon a time. :)

BTW, my visit habits here are almost exactly opposite of those I had at BrightHand back when I buzzed thru there with some regularity. In that case, I would hardly give the 'Front Page' more than a cursory glance and almost always went straight into the forums.

Hmm... This describes my viewing habits almost exactly, right down to how I treated Brighthand.