The Internet Archive just put 565 Palm Pilot apps in your web browser

There was a variant of the 15 number sliding puzzle[1] that I really enjoyed on my Palm Pilot and have never seen replicated since, except by myself as a hobby project, and I've long wished to know who authored it and what exactly the original mechanics were.

Basically it just had a series of puzzles that got harder by adding special "walls" between tiles that either prevented movement or performed a reversible transformation on the tiles that passed through (invert colors, rotate by 90 degrees, embiggen/shrink the tile, I don't remember the exact details of the original game but those are the ones I used).

Sadly it's not listed here, I'm curious if anyone knows what I'm talking about.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_puzzle

My first job was working at a company that made Palm pilot apps.

We sold sales force automation software, and had to do lots of tricks to make it work in such low powered machines.

Things like it was too difficult to sort a product file that has 200,000 items in it in real-time (E.g. to change from product codes to product description) so we had the server generate two lists each sorted and sent two over the gprs network to the devices. (Infrared connection to cellphone FTW!)

As a young programmer this was the first time I was exposed to the concept of algorithmic complexity and the possibility of trading space for time. It blew my mind.

Here I am 20 years later still coding and loving every day of it

I'm curious if we might see a [very] minor revival of these old devices since it's getting to be about that time.

I'm back to using mine (a monochrome model of the same vintage as show in the Archive screenshots) and, in 2022, I'm even writing apps for it. It's actually a ton of fun and ends up in my pocket far more than my phone.

Graffiti is still very intuitive. The display is a reasonable approximation of E Ink. Palm Desktop, hotsync, etc. all run fine on modern Windows machines, and I believe there are still viable Linux packages.

Turns out that TCP/IP is still TCP/IP and pretty much everything still "just works" provided you understand what it's trying to do (e.g. not be an iPhone). Mine automatically caches and syncs a few websites (including HN) as a sort of offline daily reading. You do need to appreciate the old Apple/iPod model where your computer is your hub and, for pre-wifi Palms, the network bridge.

They're just extremely focused little devices and excellent at what they do (calendar, notes, etc.). Treat it like it's a digital notepad, more in the vein of a pocket ReMarkable, and you might find it holds up better than you'd think.

Direct Link:

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_palm

Edit: The Software Library directory

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary

No sign of LispMe!, how sad, I miss that scheme interpreter like crazy.

Modern Android and IOS is ok, but Graffiti was a far more elegant input method than lousy virtual keyboards.