Dedicated to finding the most absurd JVM error messages known to man.

Java Language and Virtual Machine Specifications

Here's the spec, directly from the mouth of Oracle.

The following limitations of the Java Virtual Machine are implicit in the class file format:

The per-class or per-interface constant pool is limited to 65535 entries by the 16-bit constant_pool_count field of the ClassFile structure (§4.1). This acts as an internal limit on the total complexity of a single class or interface.

The amount of code per non-native, non-abstract method is limited to 65536 bytes by the sizes of the indices in the exception_table of the Code attribute (§4.7.3), in the LineNumberTable attribute (§4.7.8), and in the LocalVariableTable attribute (§4.7.9).

The number of fields that may be declared by a class or interface is limited to 65535 by the size of the fields_count item of the ClassFile structure (§4.1).

Note that the value of the fields_count item of the ClassFile structure does not include fields that are inherited from superclasses or superinterfaces.

The number of methods that may be declared by a class or interface is limited to 65535 by the size of the methods_count item of the ClassFile structure (§4.1).

Note that the value of the methods_count item of the ClassFile structure does not include methods that are inherited from superclasses or superinterfaces.

The number of direct superinterfaces of a class or interface is limited to 65535 by the size of the interfaces_count item of the ClassFile structure (§4.1).

The greatest number of local variables in the local variables array of a frame created upon invocation of a method (§2.6) is limited to 65535 by the size of the max_locals item of the Code attribute (§4.7.3) giving the code of the method, and by the 16-bit local variable indexing of the Java Virtual Machine instruction set.

Note that values of type long and double are each considered to reserve two local variables and contribute two units toward the max_locals value, so use of local variables of those types further reduces this limit.

The size of an operand stack in a frame (§2.6) is limited to 65535 values by the max_stack field of the Code attribute (§4.7.3).

Note that values of type long and double are each considered to contribute two units toward the max_stack value, so use of values of these types on the operand stack further reduces this limit.

The number of method parameters is limited to 255 by the definition of a method descriptor (§4.3.3), where the limit includes one unit for this in the case of instance or interface method invocations.

Note that a method descriptor is defined in terms of a notion of method parameter length in which a parameter of type long or double contributes two units to the length, so parameters of these types further reduce the limit.

The length of field and method names, field and method descriptors, and other constant string values (including those referenced by ConstantValue (§4.7.2) attributes) is limited to 65535 characters by the 16-bit unsigned length item of the CONSTANT_Utf8_info structure (§4.4.7).

Note that the limit is on the number of bytes in the encoding and not on the number of encoded characters. UTF-8 encodes some characters using two or three bytes. Thus, strings incorporating multibyte characters are further constrained.

The number of dimensions in an array is limited to 255 by the size of the dimensions opcode of the multianewarray instruction and by the constraints imposed on the multianewarray, anewarray, and newarray instructions (§4.9.1, §4.9.2).