alt Hacker NewsIMHO, Dex is a historical artifact. In the past it was thought that the format provides benefits for JIT compilation because it's register based, which turned out to not be case.
IMHO, Dex is a historical artifact. In the past it was thought that the format provides benefits for JIT compilation because it's register based, which turned out to not be case.
Lots of "improvements" on Dalvik over J2ME was Google's marketing to sidestep Sun, speaking as ex-Nokia, coupled with the experience of Java on Symbian devices and Sony Ericson.
All these years afterwards it quite clear that there is just similar fragmentation, and implementation differences between all OEMs selling every kind of devices, and as you say the format doesn't really provide that much benefits.
What ART has going for it, are all the improvements they started on Android 7 and later, by having a mix of handwritten interpreter in Assembly, JIT compiler with cache, AOT compilation with the device on idle, and sharing of PGO metadata via the PlayStore across devices.
Ironically Windows Phone did it first, with MDIL on Windows Phone 8 followed by .NET Native on Windows Phone 10, using compilation via the Windows Store, but Microsoft fumbled the delivery.