Writing Javascript on a Phone, on a Phone

I'm on vacation, so I'm writing some less, um, in-depth posts. Hopefully. Like this one:

I've gotten bored waiting in lines, on airplanes, etc., and I thought it would be a fun way to waste time if I could program my phone.

I wanted to be able to do it without a PC, just with the phone itself. And I didn't want to do it over the network (i.e., edit some code, send it off to a web page or network app to compile, run, etc., and return results, even thought that could be a fun way to tinker when you're on a good connection).

I thought there must be some kind of compiler or interpreter for my Blackberry or, now, Blackjack. And yes, I know, if I had a real Linux phone, then I could just download any tools I wanted. But Linux smartphones with QWERTY keyboards are hard to come by.

Enter Javascript.

I used to hate Javascript. A whole lot. Then I watched Douglas Crockford's fabulous lectures on Javascript, and it turned my whole attitude around. I realized I had never understood what Javascript was about in the first place. And here was a really smart guy who knew all of the problems, and didn't say "get over it," but talked about finessing your way to the true nature of Javascript. Which, incidentally, are lambda expressions. Crockford asserts that Javascript is more or less the only "lambda language" to organically receive mainstream adoption in the development industry.

Now I only hate the browser hosting environment for Javascript. And with enough plug-ins, even that isn't so bad.

Since Pocket IE has Javascript support, and I can edit text files and save them on my phone, I can build up a library of the functions that do what I want, and this library becomes the web page that I run and hack in with PIE. This is where having a real smartphone, not a crippled one whose manufacturer tries to deny me access to the local filesystem, is helpful.

Goofy? Kinda. But it keeps me out of trouble.