The PocketC language is nowhere near ANSI standard C. It is in fact far closer to Java or Visual Basic than C, with strings as a native data type, support for a range of hard-coded events, and no memory allocation. It's a very small language, lacking in such features as direct access to the Win32 API, compound data structures, and macros. Despite this you can write a wide variety of applications because its library includes graphics, registry, file system, and many other functions that in turn call the Windows CE API.

PocketC has the best Web site of any of the products reviewed here, and already has a booming third-party developer's market. If you see a game written or neat little utility for Windows CE, it's likely written in PocketC, because it is the best of the offerings here for those chores.

Among the more interesting contributions of third parties are Visual Form Buddy from http://www.krugsoft.com/, which generates PocketC forms code, and DelC, an improved IDE (Interactive Development Environment) from http://homepages.tig.com.au/~pcdz/delc/delc.htm that has its own support for PocketC forms. PocketC also generates code for other handheld machines. It's a bargain at $25 and the best starting point for CE development on a CE machine, at least if you know C.

PythonCE
My personal favorite of the programming systems surveyed in this article is PythonCE (at http://www.digicool.com/~brian/PythonCE/index.html), but your mileage may vary.

What appeals to me, as a programmer, is that Python, developed in the Unix world, has the most potential as a programming language, is extensible, and costs nothing. The Python language is state of the art. Its full buzzword support includes object-orientation, single inheritance, structured exception handling, modules, and packages. It also has such unusual intrinsic data types as lists and dictionaries, making it a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool at heart.

Python is dynamic--that is, it supports what Java would call reflection at runtime but to a much greater degree. This means programs run much slower than they would in, say, PocketC, but in return you get a number of useful programming constructs, better postmortem debugging, and the ability to create programs that are self-configuring in the extreme.

Python is by far the best supported and documented of the languages in this survey, with many newsgroups, Web sites, and mailing lists for users of every stripe. If you want to create Windows CE apps that look like Windows CE apps, PocketC and some of its add-ons are a better choice, because the Windows CE-ness of PythonCE isn't extensive. But if you want create apps using complex data structures or that need lots of good data mapping or string handling, Python's very hard to beat.

While PythonCE doesn't yet have support for Windows CE forms, you can bet it will. And if that doesn't happen, you can hire a C programmer to get you there because Python was designed from the beginning to be highly extensible through C. This makes it possible for you to optimize any code you need--another distinct plus.