Java on cellphones make a lousy platform for games

Michael Gartenberg | March 28, 2005, 12:57 PM

I have never felt that Java was great for developing end user applications. Back in the days of network computing hype, when Java applets were going to put Microsoft out of business (I still have a Java version of Lotus SmartSuite here somewhere) I always pointed out that Java was a good interpreted programming language with a really great PR agency behind it. It's also much slower than native apps. Lately, Java has found a new home in cellphones for doing apps with the same promise of write once, run anywhere. And the same issues are happening again as folks discover that write once run anywhere isn't reality and there's poor performance involved.

So it's nice to see John Carmack weigh in on the subject. "The biggest problem is that Java is really slow. On a pure cpu / memory / display / communications level, most modern cell phones should be considerably better gaming platforms than a Game Boy Advanced. With Java, on most phones you are left with about the CPU power of an original 4.77 mhz IBM PC, and lousy control over everything."

Don't recognize the name? John created a little game that popular back in the 90's. It was called Doom :)