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Android was not created in house by Google. The company created Android was using/emulating/whatever the technology that was popular when they created Android.

by jaxondu 11y ago

Android was not created in house by Google. The company created Android was using/emulating/whatever the technology that was popular when they created Android. They happened to check out Sun's Java 2 ME (J2ME) which Sun is pushing for small devices. At that time PDA, Windows CE, Symbian devices are popular and many are running or capable of running J2ME apps, just like running Java app on your PC today. J2ME is not just Java, but a complete SDK to build GUI apps.

hga 11y ago
Or rather, in their previous company Danger, Inc., the smartphone they developed for it used Java for those sorts of reasons, and I assume they just continued to do the same thing since it had worked well for them, technically at least.
irascible 11y ago
Mostly correct. My recollection from my early days mobile programming was J2ME or BREW. J2ME was java, BREW was c++.. and usually seemed to be used by more constrained devices that couldn't afford the Java runtime overhead. BREW had all the pain of unmanaged c++ on the desktop, minus any good tools for debugging, and writing safe code. J2ME mostly worked and the carriers liked having a standardized format that encompassed the whole asset chain rather than each app writing thier own custom code for everything. Changing a carrier logo in a J2ME app was often as simple as dropping the new image into the Jar file.. vs BREW where you would have to resurrect the complete tool chain of that project, to fix anything that broke after the original contract ended.
irascible 11y ago
Mostly correct. My recollection from my early days mobile programming was J2ME or BREW. J2ME was java, BREW was c++.. and usually seemed to be used by more constrained devices that couldn't afford the Java runtime overhead. BREW had all the pain of unmanaged c++ on the desktop, minus any good tools for debugging, and writing safe code. J2ME mostly worked and the carriers liked having a standardized format that encompassed the whole asset chain rather than each app writing thier own custom code for everything. Changing a carrier logo in a J2ME app was often as simple as dropping the new image into the Jar file.. vs BREW where you would have to resurrect the complete tool chain of that project, to fix anything that broke after the original contract ended.

by jaxondu 11y ago

hga 11y ago

Or rather, in their previous company Danger, Inc., the smartphone they developed for it used Java for those sorts of reasons, and I assume they just continued to do the same thing since it had worked well for them, technically at least.

irascible 11y ago

Mostly correct. My recollection from my early days mobile programming was J2ME or BREW. J2ME was java, BREW was c++.. and usually seemed to be used by more constrained devices that couldn't afford the Java runtime overhead. BREW had all the pain of unmanaged c++ on the desktop, minus any good tools for debugging, and writing safe code. J2ME mostly worked and the carriers liked having a standardized format that encompassed the whole asset chain rather than each app writing thier own custom code for everything. Changing a carrier logo in a J2ME app was often as simple as dropping the new image into the Jar file.. vs BREW where you would have to resurrect the complete tool chain of that project, to fix anything that broke after the original contract ended.

irascible 11y ago