With these Ipod touches being like pretty much small computers, would it be possible to do programming on one?

Yes. You can sign up as a developer with Apple and get the software development kit to write apps for iPhone and iPod Touch. You just need to know some Objective C, I think.

But you must sign up with the company for it? Im a sixteen year old programming hobbyist, and would like to simply program little programs for fun and experience straight off the Ipod, not computers other than the Ipod itself. With Internet and virtual keypad, it seems like it should be possible. Not possible?

You have to sign up with Apple and pay them a small fee. You could jailbreak your iPod so you can run any software you'd like on it, of course.

If you're just messing around with apps for fun you can certainly go the jailbreak route. As I understand it you can still use XCode and the iPhone Simulator, you just can't submit to the AppStore. If you want to make money, or get the max street cred, that's where you need the AppStore (though bascule might argue the second point).

 

I don't know much about jailbreaking, but bascule may have some suggestions for you, or you can search for some of his posts in this subforum. Not sure if he's reading this subforum while he's on the road.

 

This Gamasutra article is useful:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4211/iphone_development_everything_you_.php

 

The Apple developer's center can be found here:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone

 

Also, I think Stanford is about to restart its iTunes University class on iPhone development. There's not a lot of OpenGL in there but for basic interface stuff and fundamentals of Objective C programming it is HIGHLY recommended. All those videos are free, and the lecturers are borrowed right from the iPhone dev team. Check that out within iTunes.

 

Good luck!

 

(All of this applies only to the iPod Touch, btw -- as I understand it, the other iPods are not programmable, at least not officially. I've no idea if there are "breaking" methods for them. Only the iPod Touch and the iPhone are officially supported for development.)

All you need in order to get started on iPhone/iPod touch development is to download Xcode. From there you can begin developing in the emulator.