SquirrelJME/SquirrelJME

# Writing SpringCoat, a Java ME VM

***THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN SCRAPPED, REPLACED WITH:*** (A New VM)[anewvm.mkd]

This is about writing an important first step for my hobby project: 
SquirrelJME. This is something which I have dreamed of for awhile, a Java 
virtual machine that is open source and additionally is able to run the old 
and outdated J2ME programs which ran on the flip phones of old. This has been 
preceded by many failed attempts, but I decided to throw everything to the 
wind and learn how to do it by example.

## A Much Needed Plan

Coming off from failures and over ambitions, what I needed to do was to 
concentrate and simplify my efforts. My previous ideas were all glorious 
virtual machines which would be doing native compilation and optimizations on 
the first pass, when I only had a basic grasp on how to actually write a 
compiler. I found myself spending too much time reworking and throwing things 
out never getting anywhere. I was endlessly going in circles just working on 
what was at my fancy. Before I had a stressful home life and a horrible dead 
end job which only pointed to oblivion. Then in a moment I finally got 
something that I always dreamed of, a full-time programming job.

Previously I had done many sessions of long hours programming SquirrelJME, it 
was a program I could not stop thinking about. Now after some short 
experiences it is something that I think about now, something that despite my 
lack of free time I can actually do even at a slow pace. Working a full-time 
job makes you busy and there is not really much time to do anything at all, so 
with no organization and no plan the project was not getting anywhere. The 
thing is, I was thinking too big and too grand but it was something that could 
not be done because of the time I had available to work on the project. I had 
to make a plan and I had to simplify tasks due to my limited amount of time.

Since working at IOpipe they used an organization tool that I knew of but I 
never really knew how effective it was, this tool was Kan-ban. Seeing how well 
it worked within the company I work at was pretty much the only way I could 
see its utility. So with that, that was where my organization and tasks were 
to be on a more overview level. I still keep personal notes and thoughts that 
I type out, that has definitely help me also.

Now with limited time and the great complexity of a virtual machine, I needed 
to start small and simple. Gone were the elaborate designs of register 
allocation and native pointers, gone were the complexities of a garbage 
collector. This virtual machine is going to borrow the complex elements from 
the host virtual machine, a virtual machine which runs on a virtual machine. 
To keep implementation of it simple, it is pretty much a completely naive 
interpreter where speed is not a concern. At least once this naive machine is 
to be completed it could be dissected and used as parts to build an even 
better machine.

## Putting Together The Pieces

The time it took to build the code to a point where it could run basic 
programs took two months, working slowly after work and on most of the 
weekends. This was from mostly nothing, to something that was actually useful. 
There are two major parts that grant the ability to run this basic program, 
they are the virtual machine and the run-time library.
The part which runs the actual code is the virtual machine, this handles 
Java's stack based byte code and remembers all of the needed state for the 
program.

TODO...

## Making Things Run Faster

TODO...

## The Finishing Touches

TODO...

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I hope this was an insight into my hobby project and I do hope that it 
motivates you to start something that you enjoy.