5 ms·

My very first industry job was making J2ME games and oh my god does it still give me nightmares.

pjmlp 5y ago
If you miss it, just try Android, contrary to Google arguments against J2ME, the fragmentation experience is kept unchanged.
- m45t3r 5y ago
  We have many more issues supporting multiple versions of iOS than supporting multiple versions of Android. But neither are not even close to the nightmare that was J2ME.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Another one that wasn't blessed with OEM deviations from AOSP.
    - m45t3r 5y ago
      We have "been blessed" with OEM deviations from AOSP (we have a big number of clients and most of them are using Android because of regional characteristics), but still we have way more issues with customers using out-dated iOS versions than users on those devices. For comparison, we have way more iOS issues than Android ones, even if Android is the vast majority of our user base (~70% of our customers). Anyway, even including those cases it is still very far from J2ME days.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        - Bluetooth issues - Camera is hit and miss, even after the renewed API - Apps randomly killed on the background - Intents that don't launch as expected - NDK debugging that cannot attach to the server running on the device - Unstable GPGPU drivers - Keyboard handling - Perfectly working code that needs to be rewritten just because Yeah so much better than J2ME.
        EvilEy3 5y ago
        > - Bluetooth issues Aren't they rewriting this thing in Rust? > - Camera is hit and miss, even after the renewed API Give it time. CameraX is already vastly better than what we had before. > - Apps randomly killed on the background Up to OEMs. > - Intents that don't launch as expected ? > - NDK debugging that cannot attach to the server running on the device Welp. > - Keyboard handling Fixed. > - Perfectly working code that needs to be rewritten just because ?
        pjmlp 5y ago
        - Devices never see updates, other than a select few flagship models - It does not matter if the blame is on Google or OEMs, it is still fragmented
        techrat 5y ago
        Circular arguments are circular.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        Nope, just the Google support team arguments that ignore how similar Android is to J2ME in many aspects. One needs to support the home team after all.
        m45t3r 5y ago
        So now I am promoted to "Google support team" just because I bought to the discussion some observations from my own company? But you bringing your own observations does not put you on "Apple support team"? This seems completely fair /s. Well, my point in the end is that even with all the issues that you pointed (some are true, some we didn't hit because we don't use those features), we still see more issues on iOS even when they're a smaller portion of our user base. Heck, even if we got the most problematic Android phones for us (Asus budget phones comes to my mind), it is still has less issues than iOS.
        5y ago
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Especially with respect to Bluetooth quirks. Every single phone has a different set of bugs in its bluetooth components, and none of those sets are remotely empty. In the end, we decided we could only afford to support the 5 most popular models of the day and if you don't have that phone, then too bad for you.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Don't get me started on programming with BLE on Android. *shudders*
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Our management kept asking us to fix these issues with software. We tried things like transparently rebooting our BT module and prompting the user to do common fixes (e.g., "turn your phone off and on again") but most of the time these wouldn't work, unsurprisingly.
    - markmark 5y ago
      I literally yesterday had to buy my first iphone since the 3G because my wife bought some BLE hardware for her work that won't work properly with her Pixel 3. (It's a set of 12 devices and the Pixel can only connect to six at a time). The manufacturer won't even list Android devices they claim to have tested it with.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    That one doesn't seem like purely on Android. I've never seen a device without Bluetooth bugs. The protocol is so complicated and implementation relies so much on chips that never get fixes that I'm surprised it works anywhere.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I wasn't criticizing Android, I was criticizing Android phones. I'm sure iPhone doesn't implement the protocol perfectly either, but we certainly observed fewer issues. Whether that's because our BT stack vendors did more testing with Apple devices or because Apple has fewer bugs or both, I'm not sure.
- moshmosh 5y ago
  It's not as bad as it used to be. The "drawers full of devices", all terrible and broken in unique ways, gave me flashbacks to the Android 2.x days.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    They are still quite actuall, https://pamartinezandres.com/running-android-tests-on-cloud-devices-using-a-jenkins-ci-server-firebase-test-lab-amazon-device-b67cb4b16c40 https://pamartinezandres.com/running-android-tests-on-cloud-...
- grishka 5y ago
  It's gotten much much better in the modern times. Android 2.x would break your app in many spectacular ways, but Google has been steadily adding more coverage to its "compliance test suite" that a device must pass to be eligible for Play Services preinstall. On 4.x, there were some Chinese phones, like Xiaomi and Meizu, that meddled with notifications, action bars and list views, sometimes to the point of making your app crash, and I do remember having to work around them. But if you support Android 6.0+, like many new apps do these days, you don't have to worry much about device compatibility.
taneq 5y ago
I read the J2ME spec, looked at the procedure to draw an array of pixels to the screen, and noped out of there. Browser Java was bad enough, but J2ME? I wasn't gonna do that to myself.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  What was so hard about it? http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/mid/ui/DirectUtils.html#createImage(byte[],%20int,%20int http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/m...) http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/mid/ui/DirectGraphics.html http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/m...

If you miss it, just try Android, contrary to Google arguments against J2ME, the fragmentation experience is kept unchanged.

m45t3r 5y ago
We have many more issues supporting multiple versions of iOS than supporting multiple versions of Android. But neither are not even close to the nightmare that was J2ME.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Another one that wasn't blessed with OEM deviations from AOSP.
  - m45t3r 5y ago
    We have "been blessed" with OEM deviations from AOSP (we have a big number of clients and most of them are using Android because of regional characteristics), but still we have way more issues with customers using out-dated iOS versions than users on those devices. For comparison, we have way more iOS issues than Android ones, even if Android is the vast majority of our user base (~70% of our customers). Anyway, even including those cases it is still very far from J2ME days.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      - Bluetooth issues - Camera is hit and miss, even after the renewed API - Apps randomly killed on the background - Intents that don't launch as expected - NDK debugging that cannot attach to the server running on the device - Unstable GPGPU drivers - Keyboard handling - Perfectly working code that needs to be rewritten just because Yeah so much better than J2ME.
      - EvilEy3 5y ago
        > - Bluetooth issues Aren't they rewriting this thing in Rust? > - Camera is hit and miss, even after the renewed API Give it time. CameraX is already vastly better than what we had before. > - Apps randomly killed on the background Up to OEMs. > - Intents that don't launch as expected ? > - NDK debugging that cannot attach to the server running on the device Welp. > - Keyboard handling Fixed. > - Perfectly working code that needs to be rewritten just because ?
        pjmlp 5y ago
        - Devices never see updates, other than a select few flagship models - It does not matter if the blame is on Google or OEMs, it is still fragmented
        techrat 5y ago
        Circular arguments are circular.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        Nope, just the Google support team arguments that ignore how similar Android is to J2ME in many aspects. One needs to support the home team after all.
        m45t3r 5y ago
        So now I am promoted to "Google support team" just because I bought to the discussion some observations from my own company? But you bringing your own observations does not put you on "Apple support team"? This seems completely fair /s. Well, my point in the end is that even with all the issues that you pointed (some are true, some we didn't hit because we don't use those features), we still see more issues on iOS even when they're a smaller portion of our user base. Heck, even if we got the most problematic Android phones for us (Asus budget phones comes to my mind), it is still has less issues than iOS.
      - 5y ago
throwaway894345 5y ago
Especially with respect to Bluetooth quirks. Every single phone has a different set of bugs in its bluetooth components, and none of those sets are remotely empty. In the end, we decided we could only afford to support the 5 most popular models of the day and if you don't have that phone, then too bad for you.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Don't get me started on programming with BLE on Android. *shudders*
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Our management kept asking us to fix these issues with software. We tried things like transparently rebooting our BT module and prompting the user to do common fixes (e.g., "turn your phone off and on again") but most of the time these wouldn't work, unsurprisingly.
  - markmark 5y ago
    I literally yesterday had to buy my first iphone since the 3G because my wife bought some BLE hardware for her work that won't work properly with her Pixel 3. (It's a set of 12 devices and the Pixel can only connect to six at a time). The manufacturer won't even list Android devices they claim to have tested it with.
- viraptor 5y ago
  That one doesn't seem like purely on Android. I've never seen a device without Bluetooth bugs. The protocol is so complicated and implementation relies so much on chips that never get fixes that I'm surprised it works anywhere.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I wasn't criticizing Android, I was criticizing Android phones. I'm sure iPhone doesn't implement the protocol perfectly either, but we certainly observed fewer issues. Whether that's because our BT stack vendors did more testing with Apple devices or because Apple has fewer bugs or both, I'm not sure.
moshmosh 5y ago
It's not as bad as it used to be. The "drawers full of devices", all terrible and broken in unique ways, gave me flashbacks to the Android 2.x days.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They are still quite actuall, https://pamartinezandres.com/running-android-tests-on-cloud-devices-using-a-jenkins-ci-server-firebase-test-lab-amazon-device-b67cb4b16c40 https://pamartinezandres.com/running-android-tests-on-cloud-...
grishka 5y ago
It's gotten much much better in the modern times. Android 2.x would break your app in many spectacular ways, but Google has been steadily adding more coverage to its "compliance test suite" that a device must pass to be eligible for Play Services preinstall. On 4.x, there were some Chinese phones, like Xiaomi and Meizu, that meddled with notifications, action bars and list views, sometimes to the point of making your app crash, and I do remember having to work around them. But if you support Android 6.0+, like many new apps do these days, you don't have to worry much about device compatibility.

taneq 5y ago

I read the J2ME spec, looked at the procedure to draw an array of pixels to the screen, and noped out of there. Browser Java was bad enough, but J2ME? I wasn't gonna do that to myself.

pjmlp 5y ago
What was so hard about it? http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/mid/ui/DirectUtils.html#createImage(byte[],%20int,%20int http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/m...) http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/mid/ui/DirectGraphics.html http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/com/nokia/m...