Homebrew How do you?

[zaduma]

So I am a 6 year amateur programmer. I have made little pc games, stuff for cell phones, contributed a little to the 360. Well recently I purchased a DS lite, and am very interested in working on a homebrew application i have thought of. Infact, of all the things I have seen nothing even compares to my idea. Anyways, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

What my question is: Is how do you program something for the DS, do you code applications for it in C? That is what I've heard... What kind of functions / headers do we have to work with if so? And, any other special knowledge for DS specific programming would be appreciated. (Eh, you programmers will know what information I want)

Anyways just load me up with reading material or hit me up on a PM. Thank you very, very much.

 

[Psyfira]

I've only just started learning myself, but I'll give it a go anyway;

Yes it uses C. There's a very good tutorial on Patater.com, which covers installing DevKitPro (which contains the compiler, libraries and other useful things) as well as the actual code and some of the library functions.

There's also another library called PALib which I'm not using, but it might be worth looking at.

I'm sure someone who has a better idea of what they're talking about will be able to give a much better answer though

 

[OneMichael]

There have really only been a few DS programs with the design and features of a commercial application, true.

I'm not sure if there's a thread somewhere specifically for this, but I'll toss you a couple links:
http://www.devkitpro.org/ - devkitPro is the toolchain used to develop on the DS. There are also a few things based on it, which might help you as a new programmer, but wouldn't be wise if you plan to create an advanced application.
http://www.dev-scene.com/NDS - A good guide to start with.
http://libnds.devkitpro.org/index.html - Some documentation.