In software developer communities it is one of the most often discussed questions: “Is Java really to fat and too slow?”. For embedded devices this discussion is usually held very lively but largely without objective arguments. In this article we will first have a little look at the main reasons for using Embedded Java. After a brief introduction to the J2ME we present the “Embedded Java Assessment Suite” EJAS which was developed at 3SOFT GmbH in Erlangen. The results of some of the benchmarks may be quite astonishing when we have a look at a Java vs. C comparison of the Quicksort algorithm. After a glimpse at the structure of a JVM, its footprint and startup time, we conclude with the presentation of some coding and design guidelines for Embedded Java.
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