Writing tight
AvantGo and others in the niche are willing to look at inexperienced talent because the key difference between writing code for handheld devices vs. for PCs is relatively straightforward: size.
Whereas PCs typically contains 64MB to 128MB of RAM and a 10-gigabyte hard drive, handheld computers come with a paltry 4MB to 8MB of memory, forcing programmers to write tight code.
"It's almost like taking a 12-year step backwards in time," said HiddenMind's Pierce. "Back in the days of DOS, before Windows and Linux, you had anywhere from 384K up to 600K for a single program to run in. Back then people wrote very tight code, they had very little elbow room."
AvantGo's Upson said he sees many resumes from programmers experienced in Java and Visual Basic. These languages, he said, are not ideal for writing software for handhelds.
"Because of the limited resources, these higher-level programming environments don't perform well on the handheld," Upson said. "You end up having to write software in a lower-level language like C."
But size isn't the only difference. Wireless handheld programmers also have to be creative and flexible, keeping in mind what people want in a handheld device vs. a desktop or laptop computer.
"The biggest fallacy of the mobile world is that it's the PC with a small screen," said AvantGo CEO Richard Owen. "People are going to use mobile devices in a different way than they use PCs. There's no way I'm going to chuck my PC and surf the Internet with (my handheld) instead. It needs to be complementary and useful."
