Unfortunately, Pila is a fairly bare-bones assembler, lacking conveniences such as macros and conditional assembly. Several bugs also contribute to its inconvenience. Worst, however, is the lack of improvements - it languished for most of the past year; only recently being ported to Linux with a few enhancements. As far as I know, the include files haven't been updated to PalmOS version 2.

However, if you like assembler, and are up to the challenge, it's a usable alternative. I wrote AlCalc using Pila; others have also released applications developed with Pila. Pila and the ASDK are also free.

CASL
CASL (Compact Application Solution Language) is a Windows-hosted alternative to C/C++. You build and test your CASL application on Windows, then compile it to a program which is interpreted on the PalmPilot using their run-time interpreter. This has the downside of requiring the interpreter on the PalmPilot - although if you have multiple CASL applications you only need one interpreter on the PalmPilot, so the overall memory footprint would likely be smaller than several standalone C programs. CASL is $64.95, and demo versions are available.

PalmPilot-based tools
The first PalmPilot-hosted language was Ron Nicholson's cbasPad - a tiny "Chipmunk BASIC" interpreter. Recently, a number of other languages have appeared - Forth, Lisp, even a Java VM is in progress! This is separate from the Jump Java compiler; Jump compiles to assembler which is then run through Pila - Jump development seems to have stalled.

One of the most promising new developments is a C compiler that runs directly on the PalmPilot - PocketC by Jeremy Dewey. Several people have already developed smaller applications with it. PocketC is $18.50. Currently it runs only on the PalmPilot Personal and Professional; Jeremy plans to develop a version which will run on the older Pilot 1000 and 5000. The current version will run on these only if they've been upgraded to PalmOS 2.

While the thought of developing directly on the PalmPilot is enticing, these tools are all primitive compared to the desktop-hosted tools. And it's a pain to write complex code structures in Graffiti.

For more info
Roadcoders at http://www.roadcoders.com is one of the best starting places for PalmPilot programming information. This site links to virtually all the other programming-related sites including FAQs, tools, utilities, sample source code, articles, and other information useful for PalmPilot program development.

3Com provides the PalmOS documentation as PDF files, readable with Adobe's Acrobat reader. They're big files, but absolutely necessary. In addition to the three API manuals (Developing Palm OS Applications Parts 1, 2, and 3) there are tutorial and cookbook manuals, along with FAQs, technical notes, and other tidbits of useful information.

Wade Hatter maintains a programming FAQ (see URL below). Wade wrote an excellent comparison of GCC vs. CodeWarrior which was printed in Handheld Systems magazine in November 1997.