Short Takes: September 15, 2010
By SD Times Editorial Board
September 15, 2010 —
(Page 1 of 2)
Incoming Windows Phone 7 apps
The final version of Windows Phone 7 Developers Tools is set to be out Sept. 16 as Microsoft ramps up to release its new phone platform. Already, the Windows Phone Developer Tools have been downloaded more than 300,000 times, wrote Brandon Watson, head of the developer experience for Windows Phone 7, in a blog post.
Identifying several big-name companies Microsoft has been developing applications with, such as eBay and Esurance, Watson still encouraged developers whether “large or small” to participate and have “the first-mover advantage of having their apps or games ready at launch.”
In order to participate, Watson said, developers will need to register at Windows marketplace, finish their apps using the beta tools, download the final tools, recompile the apps with them, and have the “XAP ready for ingestion into the marketplace in early October when it opens.”
But what are the implications of 300,000 developer tools downloads? It’s a large amount compared to the number of applications in Apple’s iPhone App Store (more than 225,000) and Research In Motion’s App World, which has about 9,500 apps. — Katie Serignese
Programming like a kid again
Remember programming books in the 1980s? While many were stoic, lengthy affairs, there was a whole subgenre that has all but vanished from the Earth: the kid's game book. It used to be that if you were 12 and wanted to program, you could go down to the library and pull out a colorful tome that was filled with BASIC programs. Because doing is the best way to learn, this is how thousands of young developers learned to code.
Well, my friend Al Sweigart thought that this genre should be resurrected, particularly because no one has a BASIC environment as standard on their desktops. He recently wrote and self-published “Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python,” a thick but not intimidating tome for kids and adults alike who want to learn a real language while building games.
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