This was also MY start to programming. I won a Psion 3c when I was 12 or 13 and built shareware apps for it. I did my work experience at Psion's HQ in West London when I was 15, became a software engineer, director of engineering, startup founder, exited that startup, blah blah, venture capital investor today. All from programming on my Psion (and Acorn computers).

There really should be a FOSS re-implementation of OPL.

Better still, one that could run on modern phones.

For modern phones, I guess Python is a better option, e.g. Pydroid.

You can also install Termux and use just about anything that runs on Linux.

In rooted phones, or sideloaded since it no longer satisfies Play Store security rules, given that many Linux syscalls aren't officially supported on Android.

Termux doesn't need root. Just get FDroid.

Another one with problems reading the full length of my comment.

That comma really breaks English parsing in certain individuals.

You don't need to side-load termux; it comes from an app store. And I can't think of any case where you would need root, so I'm curious why you even mentioned that.

Not from PlayStore, but apparently everyone has English reading comprehension problems and wants to write a comment anyway.

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

You seem to have ignored half my comment; per your standards this means I am entitled to insult you and then ignore your claims. (Which I'm going to try and avoid because it's impolite, but I wanted to take a moment to both call out hypocrisy and that you seem to be ignoring every single question about what rooting has to do with anything.)

Anyways, yes, I can read, have spent a good deal of time on that exact page, am intimately familiar with sideloading (and rooting, if that were in scope), understand what an app store is, and maintain that Termux is best installed from an app store (F-Droid) rather than being sideloaded (though grabbing APKs straight from GitHub and sideloading them isn't that bad as a second option). I would suggest that if everyone appears to misunderstand you, then the most likely options are that 1. they understand you just fine, or 2. you need to communicate better. FWIW I think it's the former.

Feel insulted as much as you like, by suggesting to use FDroid, you clearly ignored the part of my comment where I mention the situtation regarding Play Store, NOT ANY OTHER KIND OF STORE, capice?!?

And you did it yet again, doubling down on the rooting part, missing the or.

So whatever dude.

Installing F-Droid is not rocket science.

Apparently English reading comprehension skills are.

you don't need root to download packages from a git repo.

Note the or on my comment.

Okay, but you did bring up root; why?

And you stop reading after the comma, why?

I clearly didn't, since I'm arguing with you about everything after the comma in another thread. Why are you avoiding the question? Did you make a mistake bringing up root and just don't want to say so?

Personally I find Python vastly overrated and nowhere near as easy as its proponents claim.

I think Python looks like an easy, simple, clear language if you grew up with Unix and C derivatives. I didn't. I am older than that, and when I was a teenager, Unix was a vastly expensive OS for high-end workstations. I never saw a physical Unix machine until I was about 17 and didn't get to try one until I was 20. (An IBM RT-PC running AIX 1.)

I come from an era of simpler, clearer OSes and languages, more user-focused and less aimed at developers. I preferred BASIC, Fortran and Pascal to the curly-braces family of languages.

I only wrote very simple programs in OPL in the early 1990s, but I found it much easier and more productive than Python, then or now.

I had an almost identical start to programming.

I didn’t have any OPL manual but there were a few short examples in the regular user guide somewhere. I can’t count how many times I read those few pages trying to glean more secrets about OPL!