Mobile Java - Are you crazy?

Looking back I remember working on WebProject, one of the first project management apps on the web. It was horrible getting it to work in the different browsers on the different platforms (very funny, there was only ie and netscape and pretty much just Windows, Linux and Unix - come to think of it, there was Win95, 98 and NT and all that) - but in hindsight there weren't really that many combinations.

After having sold the company I started thinking about what to do next and the mobilespace came to mind, it looked like it was taking off. But oh my God - writing software for about 3 1/2 million different clients - how was that ever going to work? So, I trashed that idea pretty quick.

I even remember telling this guy from England how crazy I thought it was, developing Java apps, I told him I thought it would never work on more than a couple phones... never on more than a handful.

But, I just couldn't resist the urge and started playing around and found out: hey this will work - those phones seem to be (fairly) well behaved! So here I am, writing mobile apps that actually do work on so many phones I can't believe it, and it's fun! And the best part is: now I just need three versions and I've pretty much got my stuff working on all of the phones - well, except Blackberry because I'm concentrating on networked apps and they have that wacko gizmo you have to go through - so guess what: I'm happy!