Programming for Mobile Platforms

[newbieg]

I was wondering what the difference between programming for windows desktop and programming for a mobile platform like kindle-fire or android might be. Do those platforms accept C++ easily, and do they recognize <Windows.h>?

I don't own anything besides an old flip-phone and my laptop, so I was just curious, if I got one how much work would it be to start making apps for a smart phone or kindle.

I think they usually run using Java, right?

[newbieg]

The reason I ask is my cousins showed me a game that's an app for both kindle fire and most smart phones. When I looked up the game for PC there was no version available. That just got me wondering if I wrote a cool bit of program for a PC would it be possible to just make a couple changes and quickly have a version that works on smart phones too, or would the whole program need to be rewritten from the ground up?

[Latrakx]

Without any real experience with the subject I can at least say that you do not need to program everything from scratch when porting it to a smartphone, but I can almost say for sure that <windows.h> will not work for android and iOS-phones, might work for Windows-phones though.

[MrHutch]

There are numerous ways to program in C++ and distribute across any mobile platform.

However, each platform will have a native language if you want to use some of it's core APIs.

For Android, it's Java.
For iOS, it's Objective-C.
For Windows Mobile, it's C++*.

*May have changed with the advent of Windows 8. I'm unsure.