2009/7/7 Disqus <>

I really don't get Nokia these days. The hardware is good, as it always has been for the most part, but they've always been let down by OS. I think their biggest mistake was in not getting fully behind their very own PyS60 project (Python for S60). For those of you not familiar, a huge amount of work went into the PyS60 project at Nokia internally, almost as a grassroots project, to port the Python programming language to the Symbian platform.

The project was/is a great success, in that they succeeded in getting it working, and went the extra mile developing all sorts of simple hooks so that you could write Symbian apps, in Python, on any Symbian device.

The only thing it needed (or needs, as they could still pull it off) was for the company as a whole to get behind it, sort out the run-time distribution (install it on the device, include it in firmware upgrades, make it available OTA), signing process and (to allow deeper integration into the device) allow native modules to exist in private directories (or some other solution).

Instead it's now fallen to the open source community to sort out the mess that is PyS60 app distribution (distributing the run-time with your app, different versions, different forks, overlapping modules, everything in one directory, the signing process etc.), and it needed to remain in the hands of Nokia so that it could be a common de-facto run-time across all devices. At the end of the day, only Nokia can sort out the mess that is security signing on Symbian – it's never going to be solved by the community.

So, why should they have gotten behind this? Because Apple came out from nowhere with an incredibly productive development platform and people (developers) took notice. Apple had the IDE (Xcode and Interface Builder), the debugger, the profiler, the language (Obj-C… somewhere between C and C++, but a little better thought out) and an API and it all made sense and was easy to use from day #1.

Symbian C++ is still to this day (8 years since release) considered a black art, crafted in basements by men with pointy hats and long beards. The tools provided are archaic.. as if they came from another era (which is pretty much the case given its roots in EPOC and Psion) and make you feel that we've learned nothing in the near 20 years of software development since EPOC was born.

Python on S60 by comparison gives you a nice, safe, productive language that almost anyone can pick up – its clean and concise. The guys at Nokia (and the open source community) have covered most bases of Symbian development in terms of user interface design, networking, sound and integration into the device, and wrapped it all into nice, easy to understand, Python API functions.

On top of that, you can fairly easily (caveat to the above run-time distribution issues being sorted out) include native modules with your Python application – so you can access the phones innards and do all the wonderful low-level pointy beard stuff that you need to on the device for games and whatnot, but add a great consistent Symbian UI and your higher level logic with very little development effort on top.

That Nokia haven't entertained it at all, and I know people have tried to evanglise it from within and FAILED, strikes me as a company that really has no clue as to what they're doing in this market anymore.

Feels good to get that out. Rant over!

That being said, I’m sure Nokia has a few skunk-works, Android running devices, if only to see what it does and to work some of that magic into Maemo/Symbian as needed.

Remember also, Nokia is turing itself into a hybrid-service provider. Android devices by them doesn’t fit; services that work on Android devices do.

Currently looking at buying a new handset and in complete agreement that Nokia has best hardware but my patience with s60 has run out…. This would have been a great move