Mobile Python: Rapid Prototyping of Applications on the Mobile Platform

Forewords

Guido van Rossum

While skimming the manuscript of this book, I couldn't help wanting to whip out my phone and start hacking it right there and then – and it wasn't just because I was procrastinating on writing this foreword.

As Python's creator, I'm proud that this book uses Python, but hardly surprised. Python is simply one of the best languages for exploratory programming, which is what this book is all about. Python is perfect for the do-it-yourself experiments, prototypes and games that pop off the pages everywhere in this book.

Python has been ported to many platforms, but the port to Nokia's S60 system is in many ways unique: It is by far the smallest platform to which Python has successfully been ported, and it has potentially the largest number of users. It is also one of the most connected platforms: camera, phone, Bluetooth, Internet and more. All this makes for a very exciting platform and I'm glad that Jürgen and Ville have written this book showing everyone how easy it is to program your own phone!

As will become clear when you read through the many examples in the book, programming a phone these days doesn't require a degree in wireless communication. I predict that even people who haven't written a single computer program in their life will be able to follow the instructions in this book, and soon will be writing their own programs to hook up their phone to the rest of their life in interesting ways.

While this book isn't a tutorial for the Python programming ...