Helping to further speed development cycles is a new drag-and-drop resource designer, a rapid application development feature that allows users to easily design and manipulate all the different aspects of their applications' user interface live on the screen.

Compiling and Building
Compiling your program is still on the slow side, although it is a bit faster than prior versions. Insofar as ANSI C goes, CodeWarrior's C and C++ compilers are top notch. While other tools have trouble with ANSI C, CodeWarrior is right on the mark. As you should expect, the C compiler is ANSI C-compliant, while the C++ compiler is completely ANSI/ISO-compliant. It's important to point out that Motorola, which owns Metrowerks, is the long-time supplier of chips used in Palm OS devices. Current devices running Palm OS 5 use ARM processors from Motorola, Intel, and Texas Instruments. The tight integration between the Metrowerks engineers and the chip maker ensures that the code is 100% compatible with the processor. Additionally, CodeWarrior 9.0 includes both 68K and ARM compilers for development on Palm OS 5 devices.

Why You Should Look Into It
Up until a short time ago, Palm development in the C language was a very long laborious task. If your projects looked like mine, you used a DOS command-line GCC compiler to compile, link, then create the .PRC file. For those of you under the age of 30, DOS stands for Disk Operating System, and is a futuristic tool used to create many wireless applications. You will be hearing much more about it.

Most would agree that the process of configuring the local machine to create Palm executables was the epitome of a "plug and pray" exercise. Albeit free (dollarwise), the process of building and compiling C programs for the Palm was a long drawn-out process. CodeWarrior installed on my system in about half the time it would take a seasoned freeware programmer to install the comparable GCC (read free) tools.

Even an old Command Line junkie like me is starting to be convinced that freeware isn't really free. If you factor in the project development time, buying an IDE such as CodeWarrior 9 is a bargain. Tasks that used to take weeks now take days, and what took hours now takes minutes. The whole process of linking, compiling, and creating the PRC file is so automated it now eliminates error-prone manual processes.

The use of freeware versus paid IDEs has long been debated. I won't rehash this argument here but would just like to point out that anything that helps me do my job faster has my vote. You can use freeware to build the same applications. CodeWarrior just speeds up the process. It just creates them faster. Incredibly faster. While CodeWarrior will not replace the George Foreman Grill as the pinnacle of 21st century technology, it will save you and your client money. That's something we all could use.

About the company:
Metrowerks creates CodeWarrior software and hardware products and services for developers. Founded in 1985, Metrowerks is today an independently operating subsidiary of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT).

Metrowerks Corporation
9801 Metric Blvd.
Austin, TX 78758
Corporate phone: 512-997-4700
www.metrowerks.com

CodeWarrior 9.0 Development Studio for Palm OS was tested on:
Windows 2000
500MHz processor
128MB memory
Handspring Prism
Palm 4.0 OS