Perfect Programming PDA/Palmtop/Calc

[Dave Britten]

The HP palmtops will run lots of different compilers and IDEs. I've got TurboC on my 200LX, and I've written a few assorted programs with it (some useful, some less so), and it'll compile native DOS .exe files. You can also run various forms of BASIC: QuickBasic, GW-BASIC, etc. I believe the 95LX will handle most of that as well, but anything bigger than GW-BASIC would be a tight fit without a big storage card that will work with the 95LX.

The Tandy Model 100 is cool, but pretty bulky, and doesn't have anywhere near as much memory as even a 95LX. It does have a nice big keyboard, though, and the capabilities are pretty much on par with GW-BASIC.

The Psion II is neat, but pretty clumsy to type on. Also, the version of OPL in the 3 or 5 series is a lot more mature.

Honestly, I'd recommend that you look at getting either an iPod Touch or iPad Mini with a bluetooth keyboard, and download Pythonista from the app store (which I think costs somewhere around $10). It's a really great Python 2.7 IDE that you can rig up to sync your source files with Dropbox. Python is a lot nicer to work with than BASIC or C for knocking out programs quickly, and also has a lot more object-oriented capabilities than either of those launguages. To put it in perspective, I once wrote a program directly on my iPhone to solve one of those little triangular peg jump solitaire games, without a bluetooth keyboard, entirely during a family dinner gathering, so it's really great for doing that kind of ad-hoc tinkering.

There may be an older DOS version of Python you could try running on the 95LX, but I have no idea how it would compare to current versions.

The advantage to using Python is that it's extremely popular in both desktop and server environments these days.