Paul Tremblett

Thanks Carl. This here's a right friendly place y'all run. Who knows, maybe I'll see you at JavaOne again next year? Or perhaps Colorado Software Summit in the fall?

Originally posted by swaroop shastri:
J2ME is @ boiling point!

... but is it hot? The boiling point of water is 100 degrees. The boiling point of ether is far less. Just kidding. It's great to see somebody so enthused because if we didn't have such people, technology wouldn't advance. Go get 'em!

Originally posted by Johnson Chong:
is the code in the book KILL or KISS?

I like to keep my approach to everything KISS - doesn't always work, but I try.

Originally posted by Nandkishore Dhilde:
do any body have Rom images for palm emulator?
required for testing midp application on palm emulator

You can get all of the iamges you need by joining the Palm Developer Program. It's a little bit of a pain in the neck joining but it is free. One of the advantages of getting the images this way is that they are legal. Developers have no problem exchangin ROM images but Palm views as legal only those that have been transferred from a device you have purchased or those you have obtained from the developer program.

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
[QB]
I'd start by going to the JavaRanch performance forum and asking questions there. There are some good books, including one by Peter Haggar
I definitely second the motion on Peter's book. If you ever get a chance to attend any presentations he gives, you should do so.

Originally posted by M.K.A. Monster:
[QB]
I'd like to work on the performance skill, can anyone give me some links so I can read some articles about it?
Check out wireless.java.sun.com. There's an article there now at /midp/articles/garbage by Nagendra Nagarajayya and J. Steven Mayer entitled "Improving Java[tm] Application Performance and Scalability by Reducing Garbage Collection Times and Sizing Memory ". It really gets down and dirty.
Also, check out http://wireless.java.sun.com/midp/ttips/. There's a wealth of information there from Eric Giguere. Everything he writes merits downloading and saving.
paul

The book is intended as a starting point. If that's where you're at, you might find it useful. If you've already done some of this stuff and are looking to go to the next level, then you'd probably want to look at one of the other books you mentioned.
paul

Originally posted by chanakya khatri:
How is this book different from the books currently available in the market(i.e Core J2me,Wireless Java Programming with J2ME ) Help me
decide bcos i need to buy one! Thanks

The software used to develop the examples was Forte for Java Community Edition which can not be distributed but which can be downloaded free from java.sun.com.
The examples are intended to run on all the devices mentioned in the book so that rules out conduits. Palm does offer a free conduit development kit for Java on their site.
As far as understanding without even reading the documentation, that will vary from reader to reader.
paul

Originally posted by M.K.A. Monster:
About this book.
Does this book contain some software used to compile and debug J2ME applications, I always like those books.
And does this book contain some information about conduits? This is only availeble for Palm OS I believe, but this is very interesting for every J2ME developer who wants to develop other than static applications (MIDlets), but also a synchronisable database application.
Does it contain a set of example MIDlets, so that one can understand about every function without even reading the documentation?
Regards,
Mark Monster

I think that as a beginner you should find the book easy going. As far as jumping directly into a topic, for the most part you should be able to do so.

I've not seen the book in stores yet either but I haven't gone searching. Since the book was designed to just get you going quickly, it does not go into best practices, design principles, etc.

I agree with you about the code listings. The problem is how to please everybody. If the listings are not in the book, I hear "why do I have to stop what I'm reading to go find the code on the CD?"

Things change and grow VERY quickly in this area. It would be interesting to see if that person would give the same answer today and six months from now.

Originally posted by Ruilin Yang:
[QB]Paul,
Welcome here.
Are there real products in the market written with J2ME ?
Last November in COMDEX2001 I talked with a very senior developer from Sun about J2ME. He said the technology is still not mature yet to write mission critical applications. Could you make some comments about this aspect ?

The Instant series, as its name implies, was designed to get you up and running. I generaaly find I can learn more from grabbing a working program and playing with it than I can by studying long explanations. The examples I put together for the book are admittedly contrived and not likley to resemble what one might see in the real world (to the extent I know about the real world). However, playing with the sample code, borrowing chunks of it and modifying it to do what you want makes the leap to real-world applications hopefully a little shorter.
When I want to go beyond "instant", I pick up anything Eric has written.

I do believe that J2ME has a bright future. While it's definitely cool and lots of fun, one should probably ask which would look more attractive on a resume - I'm strong in J2ME or I'm strong in Java/XML in an enterprise world? Isn't practicality a royal pain?

I've been told that the new Blackberry model is pretty good. I saw it at JavaOne and seem to remember it was a combo PDA/CellPhone (but I could be wrong on that - it's a senior thing). From what they told me, everything on the device with the exception of the VM is written using Java and they do have a developer kit. I have the older model and had tinkered with it but that was a long time before MIDP. I've written a lot of non-networked stuff for the Handspring but standalone stuff is not as much fun as the networked stuff.