Skip to content

Comment on Does my key fob have more computing power than the Lunar lander?parent

Comments

Well, they run javacard, which is a far cry from normal java or even jme.

No char, double, float or long types. No arrays with more than one dimension. New creates persistent objects in something like flash with no runtime garbage collection. No String, and in fact most of java.lang.* is missing, etc.

With all those limitations I wonder why they didn’t just use something like C…

I guess the portability of bytecode? A modern version might use WebAssembly instead which feels more suited as it’s much lower level (at least without the modern GC extensions)

It does still have object level memory safety, so it has that going for it still more than C or even a wasm based VM would.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.