::scr horns of a dilemma

[Simon Kinahan]

> Java phones are *terrible*. Java is terrible (at least/especially for
> phones. interpreted OO languages are heavy and phones are, err, not).
> J2me is a particularly bad form of Java.

Java is not, in general, interpreted, and OO languages are no heavier than
non-oo languages in any fundamental way. However, you know both of these
things, so I guess you're just being moody. If you're having performance
problems, I suggest persuading the phone vendor to change VMs. The KVM - the
current Sun small device solution - is pretty poor. The new one - code named
"Monty" - is 10 times faster and has the same dynamic footprint.

> This mainly because J2me (which stands for MicroEdition) is designed to
> run on everything from smart cards, phones, PDAS, Video recorders and
> fridges. I shit you not. So it panders to the lowest common denominator.

Phones should support MIDP. Smart cards are meant to support JavaCard. Video
recorders and so on are meant to use Personal Java. Each platform is tuned
to different applications.

Vendor specific extensions are bad. However, I suspect a lot of what you
want is currently going through JCP thingies. Sun are certainly aware than
small device games are a big deal.

Simon