Java is a rotten language for embedded programming (and nearly
everything else, too! We all dislike it here, and use it when we
absolutely have to).

A compliant Java VM would be very large, and would consume vast
amounts of RAM: memory is allocated and freed automatically
by its "garbage collector"--not a good choice when you only have
a precious 47 bytes of memory! I know Sun is working on "tiny"
version of this, but even those would be a minimum of several
hundred K for the exeuctable code itself.

Also, since you never know when it will decide to clean up
its memory, it makes it difficult to do real-time applications
where something must be guaranteed to happen within a predictable
time period.

A long time ago, Forth (it's spelled that way!) was popular
for embedded work. It runs on 8051s and PICs, and just about
everything else, too: http://www.forth.org/compilers.html
You may want to take a look at Forth if you want a HLL!

--
Robert Swirsky-Warner
Walt Disney Imagineering, R&D

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