Symbian is a little different to what you may be used to perhaps, but it is a stable platform (200+million devices out there) and the tools are mature.
Carbide is very good especially if you've used eclipse before.
A first place to look before you start Symbian programming is here: http://descriptors.blogspot.com/
Descriptors are Symbians strings. They're very efficient, however a little different to many other string implementations.
