Objective-C has roots in Smalltalk, an original message-based language that is a predecessor to event-driven programming.  While gaining in popularity over the past few years, Objective-C is still not in the top-ten programming languages used.

But nevertheless, Objective-C Programming is here to stay with the saturation of the iPad into the market, even at this early phase.  The iPad and the iPhone usage statistics (upwards of 4 million devices), and the advent of the App Store and developer profit-sharing, Objective-C will continue to grow and eventually crack the TIOBE top 10.

Other languages are quickly gaining in popularity. Objective C, which traces its family history to both C and Smalltalk, is primarily used in Macs and devices like the iPhone and iPad. It’s understandably gaining users at a rapid clip. Go is getting new developers quickly because of its compiling speed and its built in support for garbage collection and parallel computation. Still at number 11 for Objective C and 15 for Go, neither is going to threaten the top trio anytime soon.

An early decision from Apple was that the iPad would only render videos and other multimedia found commonly on the internet in HTML5.  While this is typical for Apple to control their environment, never before have they been able to control the user’s browsing experience to this level before the iPad.

Now, from an iPad developer standpoint, this makes another browser to throw into the cross-compatibility mix.  The biggest hurdle is that HTML5 is not backwards compatible, so browsers like IE6 (which will not die), will never be able to display videos natively.

Compounding the issue is that even iPad designed sites that are HTML5 compliant won’t be able to use drag-and-drop.  You know, the old cornerstone of web 2.0?  Yeah, it seems that the iPad multi-touch doesn’t support drag and drop, so all that work that devs put into their websites will have to be ripped out.

The good news is that, if your site isn’t heavy on the flash, a conversion to the iPad ready website formats isn’t a giant hurdle.  The bad news is that, if you use flash, you have a lot of iPad development ahead of you…

But unlike Flash, HTML5 doesn’t yet have a lot of production-ready integrated developer environments. “Flash has very good authoring tools,” Lawson said. As McAllister noted, Dreamweaver and FlashBuilder are already incorporated into the day-to-day operations of many Web development shops.

In contrast, the tools for HTML5 and related technologies are still being developed. Worse yet, many are aimed more at the programmer than the run-of-the-mill Web designer. As one media company told the Valleywag industry gossip site, “Guess what, we don’t have a bunch of code junkies in our newsroom.” (Though Adobe itself seems to be in the early stages of incorporating the HTML5 standards into its own production tools, if this prototype of Dreamweaver that converts artwork into HTML5’s Canvas tag is any indication).

Another potential problem: The HTML5 standard has not actually been finalized yet.

Kleiner Perkins is said to have 200 million dollars in their coffers for the right development groups and teams, and is currently funding two such companies that are dedicated to making inroads to the iPad and iTouch device market via the Apple App Store.

It’s not a bad bet.  This is considered by many to be the dawn of a new development frontier since the websites have to be built in HTML5 compliance, and the applications are generally written in Objective-C or boiled down to that language’s bytecode when developed elsewhere.

For iPad developers, this is great news; even in a recession, there’s a way to make a buck on iPad development.  Meanwhile, other VC firms are reporting an amazing amount of business plans coming in related around iPad applications that can sell in the App Store.  Estimates point to iPad owners spending anywhere from $25-$35 per month on books, apps and other iPad consumables.

Kleiner Perkins doubled the size of its fund devoted to Apple devices to $200 million and said it’s backing two ventures that are developing so-called apps exclusively for the new device. AppFund, set up specifically to finance iPad-related startups, plans to announce five investments in coming weeks, partner Daniel Klaus said…

He projects that about half of iPad buyers will actively buy games, books, newspapers or magazines for the iPad. The average iPad owner will spend $34.25 a month on apps and content, he said, or slightly more than the cost of a hardcover book.

So much so, he has ported Newton to the iPad.  Vi, a receiver of an early delivery iPad for his review, did more than David Pogue did in his time with the iPad, he actually got Newton to run on the device.

We can’t say why he did it, but we can say it took him less than a week and we can also say that Jonathan Vi loves the Newton more than anyone else on our planet.  I just hope he enjoys the iPad as well…

[Vi] has rigged it to run Apple’s old Newton personal data assistant from the ’90s. Fire up the Newton emulator app, and the iPad’s screen changes to that muted green color with dim gray text and the old Mac fonts.

Well, this article covers three of the names out there that are alternates to the SDK 3.2 from Apple.  Andrew talks about PhoneGap, RhoHub and Titanium as alternates to the Objective-C language that can compile down to the Objective-C bytecode.

The big holdup with choosing a different language is twofold- First, you’re going to have to learn a language anyway and, while Objective-C can sometimes be like reading stereo instructions, Apple is doing everything it can to make learning Objective-C for the iPad easier.  Second, Adobe’s CS5 is touting the ability to build in Flash and Actionscript while compiling down to the bytecode as well.

No matter which language you choose to develop in, be prepared to get that Hello World cranking, and then be ready to walk the stairs…it’s not going to be easy however you choose unless you already know one of the iPad programming languages.  For the record, Flocchini says he’s used Titanium and seems to swear by it until he is less lazy and actually bites the bullet to learn Objective-C.

To get into iPhone developing, I was willing to spend the $99 Apple wanted, but that was it. Until I could make that money back, I wasn’t interested in paying for anything else. Now that I see the backend and have actually made some money, the idea of paying for development is more appealing.

Cocoa, for those of you just getting into the iPad game, is a language that dates back to the old NeXT days and is used as an object-oriented API to building out interfaces.  For those old-school VB folks, think of the Cocoa language as an OOP version of VB’s Interface Builder that you can use to work in xCode.

While you’ll still need to know Objective-C to code your iPad applications, Cocoa is also one of the other major tools you’ll need in your belt to compete.  If you’re OOP stable, Cocoa should not be too far of a stretch, and keep in mind it’s mainly an API link into deeper resources.

Apparently, according to Gaskin, the Cocoa SDK has been updated to handle the iPhone and iPad multitouch.  Nice.

The CocoaTouch framework integrates the iPhone’s multitouch interface support for iPhone application developers. iPads are similar to the iPod Touch, but there aren’t enough details available yet to see how Cocoa will be supported on the iPad.

The iPad firmware release is available for users who are members of the Apple development community that charges $99 per year.  For the amount of cash you can make in the App Store, it’s a small price to pay and the resources that are available through apple are simply amazing.  You can tap into a deep community that is both friendly and helpful.

Prior to last night’s update, developers were coding their apps with beta versions of the tools, and even had to finish their iPad apps with the pre-release SDK to hit the March 27 deadline if they wanted their titles available on the April 3 iPad launch day.

While Hotz is not claiming 100% jailbreak at this point, the iPad is a large extension of the iTouch and iPhone family, and this leads to having the same hacker holes that those did as well.

What Hotz claims is to have an untethered jailbreak solution for the iPad.  A tethered jailbreak involves hacking into your tablet pc’s operating system to “liberate” it from the bindings of Apple’s store and policies.  Essentially, what Hotz has supplied in the past is a simple website that accesses certain functions of the iPhone’s operating system and basically tricks the phone into believing it can accept any software and it will not be rejected as unauthenticated software.

For developers, at the very least, it is a way to load and test your new iPad software on the actual unit without having to worry about digital signatures and distribution.  For others, its a way to get some pretty cool bootleg applications that might not be “approved” by the Apple App Store.  However, a word of caution, it’s been known for Apple to, with releases of new operating systems, look for these jailbreak applications and then brick your device.  There’s will probably be a process to roll back your install of any iPad jailbreak and before loading in any new Apple-sanctioned updates.

“It is completely untethered, works on all current tethered models (ipt2, 3gs, ipt3), and will probably work on iPad too,” Hotz said in his blog post.

It’s plausible to believe that an iPhone OS jailbreak will also work for the iPad. While the iPad will support apps that are exclusive to the device, its OS shares the same DNA as the iPhone’s.

This site also offers a couple of video tutorials on the Objective-C development paradigms and syntax.  Good way to learn, definitely.

So developers are expected to create applications without any access to an actual iPad (sure sure, emulators are available, but we all know that only goes so far) and with the latest beta of the SDK.  The beta, by the way, was released yesterday (3/19).

So realistically, you have two choices.  Be a purist and wait for the actual iPad to ship so you can truly test your applications, or go with it because everyone’s applications are being built site-unseen.   We’d say, for obvious competitive reasons, go with the emulator.

The good news is that the normally long developer review is on double-time, iPad needs apps.  Go make them!

The good news, though, is that iPad owners will have more than just Apple’s apps to choose from on day one. Also, developers have observed especially quick review times of late. This suggests that even in the worst case that some apps require an early fix, developers should be able to get it out to users with little delay.