Bruce Stewart points out the Problems with Symbian. This follows concerns voiced by Mike Rowehl when he wrote S60 Platform Dying.
Developing for the Symbian OS is no “walk in the park”; Java development truly is a breeze when compared to the Symbian OS; this is a truism, unless your name is John Kern, Symbian OS master…
:-)
But the case of the Symbian OS is the case where you have to go with the numbers… by this I mean, Java ME and Symbian OS and the Mobile Web are the top 3 mobile platforms to develop for, if your goal is to maximize end-user reach… So the case of the Symbian OS is the case where we must bite the bullet and deal with it, and wait while the development tools and the environment itself continue to mature. Note that there are other language options for Symbian OS/S60 beyond their C++ implementation.
As Douglas CrockFord wrote (and I love his quote):
“I used to say that the web browser was the most hostile programming environment ever devised, but that was before I found out about Mobile.”
ceo