61–70 of 156 posts
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I don't think anyone has used "hip and cool" and "Java" in the same sentence for at least 15 years (2001) and no amount of Android can fix that.
Java devs talking to me about Groovy always made me chuckle
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I'd say never. That would kind of be like an apple switching to Swift for iOS. This is even harder for the Android runtime because it's run on a virtual machine with characteristics that don't easily map to another language. Basically if they switch to any other language all the apps that currently use Java (ie. all of them) will have to practically use their own VM -which would be slow - or reprogram everything in a…
Actually as a first step the language could be implemented on top of the dalvik vm. It's just that the IR of go would need to change for that target. Something like Truffle for OpenJDK could help by adopting new languages.
It sounds like this all would take a lot of time to complete. What would be the point for Google to do all this work?
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Why would maintaining two runtime make dalvik app slower? They're all interpreted anyway.
They were JIT-ed for a while. That's what the "optimizing apps" modal dialog after updates is about.
I think you meant AOT-ed. The language really doesn't matter though, as long as it can be converted to Dalvik bytecode.
Google should have acquired Sun instead of buying dropcam/boston-dynamics/motorola and such.
Kotlin in Android looks promising.
P.S. Dart actually has a Java-to-Dart converter hidden somewhere. I can't find the link, but the static analyzer was ported from Java to Dart using it. Perhaps they could expand that effort?
Oracle should pay Google for using Java in Android and keeping the language somewhere around edge of hip and cool. I wonder how long it will be before Google flips to Go or JavaScript for Android.
I don't see Android team itself is going to switch to Go or Javascript for android. Otherwise, I would say Kotlin[0] would be a better alternative to Java. [0]: https://kotlinlang.org
FYI, Oracle is pushing this agenda to squeeze Java shops in other places as well. The tack they are taking is to define any computer that does "one specific thing" as an embedded device and ask you for $300+ per "device", plus some other lofty fees. ( http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/price-lists/java-... ) So, if you're using Java in a kiosk, ATM, media player, etc, they may be coming for you. My guess is t…
Oracle should pay Google for using Java in Android and keeping the language somewhere around edge of hip and cool. I wonder how long it will be before Google flips to Go or JavaScript for Android.
I don't see Android team itself is going to switch to Go or Javascript for android. Otherwise, I would say Kotlin[0] would be a better alternative to Java. [0]: https://kotlinlang.org
Kotlin is JVM + Java interoperable language and this is its major if not sole selling point. So it does not help Google in any way regarding Oracle-Google copyright and patent issues.
Any kind of support might come when some developers get down and write lot of code to support that language. Android team is not going to add any support just because someone wanted or voted to support new language on Android platform.
At least people who wanted Go on android have written extensive amount of code to add support and still they are far from done.
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It will never happen. In spite all of this, Android Team has given zero support for anything other than Java on Android, even for its own languages. The NDK is anemic, because "In general, you should only use the NDK if it is essential to your app—never because you simply prefer to program in C/C++. When examining whether or not you should develop in native code, think about your requirements and see if the Android f…
Never say never, that's what I thought about Apple and objective-C, and they just invented a new language for it. True, it runs in the same runtime, but it does allow them to slowly move away from 20 years of history. Mind you, the obj-C runtime / Foundation isn't badly set up at all, I'd argue it's better than the Java SDK.
Unfortunately that still means that there is no good way to write cross-platform mobile apps.