views on j2me

[Danish Shaukat]

Hi all !
Not much has been said about j2me.
What do you guys expect in the future.
Will it be nice to have j2me in skill set.
Job oppourtunies for j2me programmers...
Well, Sun is making lots of hype about it...just read the articles.
Regards
Danish Shaukat

[Mark Herschberg]

I think it'll be at least another year before we start to see much movement on the J2ME front. I've been saying this since the summer. With the recent economic downturn, it could even be further out.
I say this for two reasons. First, aside from phones, wireless is more hype than substance right now. The infrastructure needs to grow a little more before serious wireless applications are supported. I think the unwired handheld market is about reaching capacity in the US, so wireless is the way to go.
Second, J2ME has a lot of issues. I give Sun a lot of credit for creating an "semi-open source" language, and getting buy-in from the commercial vendors. However, this works best when the market has already optimized the solutions and the Java APIs are simply mimicing what's been proven to work. With J2ME, everyone is making it up as they go. We don't know that this is the right way to do it, we're just taking out bets guess. So I think J2ME still needs time to mature. (Contrast this with, say messaging/JMS, which had been developed over the last 10 years, before it was adopted into Java.)
The best skills you can have for J2ME is to understand the JVM and how it works. Being able to optimize for memory and processor speed will be key in the early days, and it's a skills applicable to any Java project.

--Mark

[Danish Shaukat]

Thanks Mark !
I've got some other questios too.
Who will be the potential employers of j2me developers. Will they include cell phone companies like Nokia etc and the mobile service providers.
Secondaly will the potential employers of j2me want that the candidate have experience with java (standard edition ,enterprise edition...). Since j2me programming is a bit different from programming of other java editions.
Regards
Danish.

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Danish Shaukat:
Thanks Mark !
Who will be the potential employers of j2me developers. Will they include cell phone companies like Nokia etc and the mobile service providers.

They will be telecoms, phone companies, enterprise companies, application companies, etc. There is not currently any reason to believe one industry will dominate the market. However, as the field is rapidly changing, this may not be so true in 6 months.

Originally posted by Danish Shaukat:
T
Secondaly will the potential employers of j2me want that the candidate have experience with java (standard edition ,enterprise edition...). Since j2me programming is a bit different from programming of other java editions.

Any employer with a clue will want the developer to know Java. Frankly, J2ME isn't really much different from J2SE or J2EE. The Midlet lifecycle isn't that complex, and most APIs behave in expected ways. The only trick, as I noted above, is that you have very limited resources, and need to know how to get good Java performance.
Employers without clues will want 5 years of J2ME experience.

--Mark

[shashank shah]

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
Any employer with a clue will want the developer to know Java. Frankly, J2ME isn't really much different from J2SE or J2EE. The Midlet lifecycle isn't that complex, and most APIs behave in expected ways. The only trick, as I noted above, is that you have very limited resources, and need to know how to get good Java performance.
Employers without clues will want 5 years of J2ME experience.

--Mark

well said mark.
Unfortunatly, from my recent job search experience- most of the employers fall in second catagory :-(