And what's wrong with Java on '51?
A lot. This makes the '51 "the little engine that could" not "the engine that ran"

Java is one more of those thingies that is invented to make idiots do something they call programming.
Now, when it comes to bigger machines I am a supporter of portability, but way too much performance has been offered on that altar. Do you recall that the old 10MHz PC (without portable code) actually did many things faster than the 2GHz machine running portable java on your desk. So what if it takes 2 hours or even 2 days to 'port' code from e.g. Linux to e.g. Windows, if the result is a 1000% performanxce improvement.

The PC pro.. naah idiots mantra "if you think it is too slow, buy a faster computer" is, probably, the reason for a large percentage of the electricity shortage that many countries have. The craziest example is the undercutting of the value of the "green PC initiative". Dell et al makes PCs today that use, say, 20% less power per MIPS than 5 years ago. Then the gatesians come out with Vista that require 4 times more MIPS for a performance comparable to XP for a net power consumption increase of hundereds of percent (you ARE going to buy that quad processor thing to get the speed you need/want, aren't you).

"There is at least one '51 derivative (plus the needed "cloud") supporting it, and I suspect there are more." just for kicks, caoul you provide a link.

Erik

PS I am sure that Java has it's place, but not in the mainstream or as the primary programming language. Of course, as this thread show, that will happen some day.