Use Obfuscation to Improve the Size, Performance, and Security of Your J2ME Applications

bfuscate. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, obfuscate is a transitive verb meaning to darken, to make obscure or to confuse. In the software engineering business, obfuscation refers to "the deliberate act of nondestructively changing either the source code of a computer program or machine code when the program is in some compiled or binary form, so that it is not easy to understand or read." Evidently, the author of this last definition must have seen some of my late-night code and decided that the adjective "deliberate" should be added to the definition lest someone mistake plain-old poor quality coding for obfuscated code. All kidding aside, obfuscation can be a serious tool in Java programming.

In J2ME, obfuscation can help protect applications that are deployed to millions of devices. Importantly, but often forgotten, obfuscation can also help developers with some other equally important issues—namely application size and performance.