A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
There are 64K limits scattered throughout the JVM (method bytecode limit, data object size limit, number of arguments to functions, etc.) This is really not acceptable in this day and age.

JUSTIFICATION :
"640k should be enough for anybody."

Seriously, a 64K limit is insane. For hand-written code, a 64K limit probably doesn't matter. However, the JVM is becoming a target for generated languages. For example, the ANTLR grammar generator creates large deterministic finite automatons which fairly easily exceed that limit. Other things (like Jython) are also hitting the same thing.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
There should be very large limits (read: 64-bit or larger) on the size of data objects, classes, methods, etc. This almost certainly means a change to bytecodes to allow for greater offsets than 16 bit. That's fine. Less performance and higher memory usage to allow functionality where it didn't exist before is acceptable.
ACTUAL -
Methods with bytecode larger than 64K will not compile.