Programming for the BlackBerry

This seems like a somewhat daunting task, mostly because (at first) I could not find any documentation on it. So I’ll help out anyone else struggling to the best of my knowledge.

  1. The website for developers seems to be broken. There are a few pages that result in 404 errors and I can’t find any alternate routes to any of the affected ones.
  2. Registering is the best way to be continually asked personal information.
  3. When you log in, remember your username is your e-mail address, and your password has to have uppercase, lowercase, and numbers. I used my favorite password, capitalized with a little extra to adhere that criteria.
  4. The Java add-on for Eclipse is all you need to download and install. No previous installation of eclipse is necessary. (Unless you don’t have a copy of the JDK(?) on your system…might need to get that as Eclipse requests)
  5. The start page for Blackberry projects is LOADED with good resources. Loaded. The tutorials are pretty darn good too.
  6. If you’re familiar with a Visual Studio language, this’ll be a little of a jump for you. Starting a “window” requires 10 lines of code from the get-go. Putting a button on the screen? Another one or two. Forget about even getting it to do what you want it to, or where you want it to be…
  7. Eclipse is darn smart. It knows your variables and just about every command you have at your disposal too. Just start typing to see.
  8. You don’t have to use the BlackBerry Storm emulator to run your projects if you don’t want. There’s one for the 8530, my phone, too, but it’s a bit slower to start and harder to test with it.
  9. Once you start the emulator, no need to close it. Just hit Debug again and the new program will be copied over to the emulator. It saves a lot of time that way.

So that’s all for now. More revelations as they come.

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