I've been working with embedded systems over twenty years and I think Java, and particularly native-execution and compiled Java, are the biggest news since the C language. The Real Time Specification for Java has added the last required package to make Java useful in the sorts of applications in which I want to use it.

I'm an electrical engineer by degree, mainly a hardware person. All the "embedded" Java books out there (I buy every one I find) are written by software types and are concerned with J2ME/MIDP cell phones. This is of only passing interest to me, and, I suspect, to the 100,000+ engineers currently working in embedded systems. These are the folks who read Embedded Systems Programming, Circuit Cellar Ink, and other trade publications. Instrumentation controllers, for example, have little in common with cell phones.

Java can (and should) now be applied to many systems in which traditional X86, 68000, 8051, 6811, and other well-known controllers are being used (and mis-used). But no one has written about how to do this, especially from the perspective of a working embedded systems engineer.