[EDIT - I have found multiple posts. I was searching for the wrong key words. Feel free to move along. It looks like C or Python.]

I am a new user to the community and also a new user to the N900. I just ordered my N900 and will receive it soon (hopefully). It's in-transit.

I didn't see a similar posting in the forum (I apologize if this is a duplicate). I figured there will be a lot of noobs coming into the community who might be asking the same question. I am a Maemo/N900/tablet pc noob myself.

What would be the best development language for the N900? I am looking for something I can also use with my day job. I figure I can learn twice as fast if I can use it for both.

I was going to learn Powershell because I work with Windows all day, but I can't use Powershell on the N900. I want to leverage my “excitement” for the device as motivation to learn a language.
I was thinking Python, but wanted to get some expert opinions.

Please don't turn this into a flame war among each other. I know this can be a highly debated topic. Since we are all moving towards the same goal, let’s try and keep it professional.

Hi and welcome to the forums.

See this thread http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34073

Edit: personally I've gone with the Qt train because that will be the main tool kit from Maemo 6 onwards.

Trust me, this type of question keeps popping up time and again in this forum, so I would guess you haven't done your part seriously, however, as you ask, though I'm not an expert either, if you are strictly talking about n900 and not the future releases then C/gtk+ would be your best bet as the C is the main language it depends on. There are however, other languages too like python etc, but I'm not sure about "java" yet, you can start development with and I'm sure C/gtk+ would be helpful in extra work as well. Anyway, if you are thinking about future releases as well then Qt will be what maemo will be based on and it is cross-platform too.
EDIT: Well!! there you go..

Nokia is pushing hard to move the community development to Qt.
Actually in the Barcelona long weekend there was a track on development using the Qt 4.6 tech preview 2 for maemo 5.
If you have the sdk from forum nokia

http://www.forum.nokia.com/Tools_Doc...atforms/Maemo/

then installing the qt 4.6 is easy. You can find instructions in http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...Qt4_for_Maemo5

Regards

Personally I recommend Qt. And the performance will keep improved. Qt-Creator will be integrated with Maemo (I saw some codes already committed to Git, but not sure how to turn it on yet).

Python + Qt = PyQt

We have a Google Wave going for people like you - newbies wanting to learn to program in Python on the N900. If you are interested in joining send me a PM.

First of all, you should get the SDK installed and running.
Then try to follow the examples on http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation to get a feeling of how to write code for Maemo, even though you're not planning to write code in C.
As others have already said, Qt will be the default toolkit on Maemo in the future, so this rules out C. C++ and Python are both good for programming with Qt.