[ntlve]

This is just me guessing but one of the initial goals of Dalvik was to use as little space as possible (due to memory constraints of hardware at that time). Perhaps they thought saving a a byte or two on method identifiers was a good idea. This would not be a problem if it weren't for the fact that dx also squashes all classes into one single class, meaning that instead of being 65K methods per class you now get 65K per apk.

[judk]

Ah, mobile. Recapitulating all the horribly constrained hacks of the early PC era, in handheld size containers.