OK, I have downloaded the SDK, had a look and have decided that I would like to write a simple n900 app.
I understand that Nokia are pushing Qt going forward, my question is what should I start reading up on or learning in order to write an900 app?

I have some vb script skills and I once wrote a very basic visual basic program - and I mean basic!!

I would like it to be a language that I can use elsewhere, not just for n900 as I come from a windows background. If I have read things correctly, I understand that I can use pretty much any language as long as it can hook into Qt??
Should I be trying to learn C++, or even Ruby? What is the best way going forward as I dont want waste my time following dead ends..

Many Thanks

Welcome!

http://www.forum.nokia.com/Tools_Doc...on/Maemo.xhtml

http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.ph...velopers_Guide

Please use the Development forum for developer questions.

Cheers qgil,
I did see the first link, but it seemed to n900 specific, I was looking for something a bit more general purpose and was getting confused as to what bits were general programming and what bits where purely applicable for the n900

I will go through the whole thing, make some notes and post in the developers forum...

this thread might be helpful to give you an overview
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32988

My completely unbiased recommendation would be to learn Python. It is easy to learn, elegant and powerful and yes you can use it elsewhere.

Just what I was looking for - off to have a look at c++ and python and I will make a choice once I have read a bit more..

There's a good Qt programming book freely available at: http://www.qtrac.eu/C%2B%2B-GUI-Prog...t-4-1st-ed.zip

It's the older edition of the book but the basics haven't changed. That's book I used to learn Qt.

I recently made some similar decisions. And after a brief dable with C++ and I chose Python. although I've written just for the n810 at the moment. as far as I can tell the only things that make it maemo are two calls to hildon program and hildon window. I could easily switch that and have everything work anywhere else.
I just put up a post on my blog about my first attempt to write a basic app (in this case a twitter client) using python

I second other people in this thread and say C/C++ and Python are the most desirable languages to learn, not just for writing maemo applications, but in general.

What you have to understand that Python is an interpreted language, .i.e., there is an interpreter program which runs your Python script. This allows for higher level features (e.g., you don't have to declare the type of variable) but also incurs some overhead in terms of speed and memory requirements. C++ on the other hand runs natively (i.e. faster in general) but is also harder to learn.

So, if you don't have any programming experience, start playing around with Python and learn the basics. There are also Python bindings for Qt, so you can learn about that as well (using Qt in Python and C++ is very similar). If you like it and get more proficient after a while, you can start looking at C++.

Am I the only one still programming in GWBASIC?

Yes, Den, 'fraid so... you and those two other guys doing COBOL and FORTRAN should group together :-)