Well,
native methods have their place. When you want to get access to hardware you can't normally get to via
Java or do something really, really, really fast then native code might be what you are looking for. The key is to write the code in as portable language as possible (like C or C++) and not assembler. That way, you can supply the source code with your program so it could be recompiled for the target platform if required.
Native code, like you rightly point out, does restrict the portability of Java so it's something you need to consider carefully.
David.
