I created the Gmail application running on J2ME, which we shipped in 2006 [1]. When we shipped, this application ran on about 300 different devices which, for

I created the Gmail application running on J2ME, which we shipped in 2006 [1]. When we shipped, this application ran on about 300 different devices which, for those of you who ever wrote J2ME code, is pretty impressive. J2ME development was an absolute nightmare. There was no debugging on device, pretty much no tooling, even doing a println to find out what was going on in your code was not supported (I had to write entire libraries that would display debug messages in the window titles). The default J2ME widgets were absolutely horrendous (and they all looked different on various phones) so we had to write our own widget library. This came at a price but it was invaluable in being able to make the app work on hundreds of devices. Looking back, I honestly don't know how we did it, but the team was absolutely brilliant. Shortly thereafter, I joined Android where I was asked to create the Gmail application and help build up the operating system. With my experience on J2ME, I knew exactly what I wanted Android to have: - Seamless on device debugging - IDE support - Powerful view system - Java API's that look familiar to Java developers In short, everything we never had on J2ME. Needless to say, my subsequent work on Android was infinitely more pleasant than the year I spent on J2ME, which I don't miss one bit :-) [1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/gmail-mobile-client-is-live.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/gmail-mobile-client-i...