I have never ambitiously developed for Palm devices, but have a few of them still lying around in a drawer. I have read a beginners guide on C++ on these things, and I hated it. I was only 15 or so at the time, but some things stick.

I enjoyed it so much more to just whip up a simple interface in glade and write a really short script in python around it for my n800. That was so easy, it's ridiculous. Although I sucked at python, and will likely continue to do so.

That's why my opinion doesn't really count from a developers perspective, but rather from the perspective of a power user playing with his little computer and having a good nerd time.