hi, I’m trying to learn to program on C and C++. My goal is to get to do applications for a phone with symbian that I have to make it more useful. I already have an idea what I want to do. Mainly make a browser for smolnet protocols (nex, gopher, Spartan, finger, etc.) and more in the future make some social network customers open code. The easiest I think it would be to make a mastodon client, especially because mastodon already works on my nokia with symbian, thanks to brutaldon (although I feel that it lacks functionalities that I would like to have, like to see what is inside the instance and see at the level of fedverse). and perhaps others like “lemmy,” “social gnu,” “friendica,” and already finally and my “Magnus opus” would definitely be, a client of “invidious”.

of course all this is far beyond my current possibilities. But that’s why I want to step up. For the moment I base it on the syntax on c and c++ and I already understand the operators, and also the comparisons and the Boolean operations. I also partially understand the pointers… but I really don’t know what kind of use they have. so that the applications you create, you can test them in my system with linux, I need to program everything in c, and use c++ but only in a basic way the latter, as symbian only supports old versions of c++ posix, (it’s true that if I install qt supports more modern versions and it would be much easier to do anything. But I have been recommended not to use it) I have also been a little interested in zig and nim, as they compile C and theoretically should be languages that could work perfectly, but on the other hand, also increase the number of languages to learn may not be the best idea at the moment.

for the subject of graphics, I think the best option is to use sdl, there is a port of sdl 1.2, the problem is that in my language there are practically no sdl 1.2 tutorials, and in English I have found little. This is the best thing I could find “lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/” is not that this evil (in fact I have not yet tried it) but well, I would also like to know, that so much changes the syntax against sdl 2, I just want to do simple things, buttons, menus, text boxes and already, I ask this to see if I can make the work easier and just see tutorials in my language and not eat so much my head asking anyone to translate me all by one.

i initially thought about using sdl interface library to make life easier. But I quickly realized the problem that most of these library are designed for the use of mice, something that in my nokia n95 because of course there is no… microui was the library that had convinced me most, plus that it not only depends on sdl, it can also use opengl, and a friend explained to me that maybe and even could serve with the native interface library of symbian. I’m sure he’ll save it for future projects. But for things like his little documentation and it’s not even spoken in my language, and I thought of everything, less intuitive. Because it makes me leave it at least for the moment, I also saw others like raygui, but that would be my turn to make a bridge, and while I can do this with vibeconding and so… well, the truth is I’d like to be able to understand my own code… I don’t rule it out completely… But having to adapt so many things, the truth is I think it’s more cost-effective just to use pure sdl and stop making life difficult.

There is also the option to use an old version of opengl en. But I think that’s a little bit of killing fly-to-gun, total, I just need a 2d, minimalist interface and little more… I don’t know if there are any other library that allow me to do graphic interfaces, and that being written in pure C can be carried automatically, without modifications, I understand that there may be a remote possibility that lvgl will work, but… I don’t think it’s worth it.

So, well… this is all to ask for recommendations and programming exercises on c, c++ and sdl.

#programming