David's Computer Stuff Journal: Hecl Jacta Est

Hecl Jacta Est

David N. Welton — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:35:00 -0700

I don't know if androids dream of electric sheep, but I've certainly been losing a lot of sleep over Google's Android, and am glad that the Android Developer Challenge is winding up, as I've been doing all Android, all the time for the past month or so.

I have greatly enjoyed working with Android, as it's much more capable than Java ME. It's still very much a work in progress, and only time will tell if Google and their partners are able to best current mobile programming systems... or if the web will simply obviate the whole thing, as it's doing in many other areas. Win or lose, I will continue to support Android as a platform that Hecl runs on, but in the meantime, I hope to go back and look at some less future-oriented code and get back to some Java ME work. More on that soon...

In any case, here's hoping that the contest judges see the value in bringing a scripting language to mobile phones! I also hope to see actual hardware soon, as I'm really looking forward to getting my own Android phone.

"Hecl Jacta Est" by David Welton

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:18:51 -0700

Part of the problem is that with Android, it's very easy to see what's supported. A few clicks from here, and you can see exactly what packages and classes are supported:

http://code.google.com/android/

This page has some information on Phone ME, but it's still kind of vague:

https://phoneme.dev.java.net/content/phoneme_feature_r2.html

Looking around more, I found this:

http://java.sun.com/javame/reference/apis/jsr218/

Which seems to indicate that it's more advanced than current Java ME solutions.

But... it's still just not real clear where the whole effort is going, when things are going to ship, what devices will support what. As a developer, I don't feel they're communicating with me very well.

"Hecl Jacta Est" by Emanuele Ziglioli

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:23:50 -0700

Hi David, I was curious to see in what respect you think Android is much more capable than Java ME. I've never written anything for either platform but I've looked at them for some time.

PhoneME is Sun opensourced implementation of the CLDC and CDC profiles. CLDC is very limited and destined to low end phones while CDC is an implementation of Java 1.4.2 but still can run in a limited amount of RAM (~5MB). I think the platforms Android can run on are also suitable for CDC and therefore when you compare Android to ME you should really pick a profile that matches.

I don't know about the graphic abilities offered by Android (that compares to CDC Personal profile) because I didn't need to look into it. But I guess in that respect Android might be more advanced.

Another aspect could be a standardized API to access components like GPS. I don't know if ME has specified yet a standard way to gain access to the phone features either than complex JNI. How about Android?

What I like about PhoneME CDC is that it is built for portability. It's a pleasure reading Mark Lam's blog, an architect and engineer behind the CDC virtual machine http://weblogs.java.net/blog/mlam/

Final thought: is Android less or equal to CDC + OSGi?

"Hecl Jacta Est" by David Welton

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:28:22 -0700

Emanuele - I'd be interested to hear about your experiences with Phone ME - it's not something I've looked into yet.

In terms of the differences, not knowing anything about Phone ME, I can't really say how Android compares to it. I do think that Android's marketing efforts are paying off, though, and that is, like it or not, an important consideration. There's a lot to be learned about Android in terms of where it's going to go in the future, and how they will manage some of the problems that J2ME has had in the past. I'm curious to see how it turns out!

"Hecl Jacta Est" by David Welton

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:47:07 -0700

Cool, I got quoted here:

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/04/14/android-developers-challenge-tech-wire-cx_ew_0415android.html

"Hecl Jacta Est" by Emanuele Ziglioli

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:14:02 -0700

I've just started getting familiar with the PhoneME advanced project. To me, the CDC profile is just as powerful as Java SE itself. Maybe Android makes it easier to access the underlying device drivers as opposed to JNI?

"Hecl Jacta Est" by David Shellabarger

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:36:17 -0700

I hear you about the long hours working on android. I'm ready to take a break. Glad the ADC ends today. :)