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> Would a rewrite in (say) Go even be possible? The problem isn't rewriting Dalvik in Go or language X,Y,Z.The problem is the APIs used by Google -- and Oracl

by aikah 11y ago

> Would a rewrite in (say) Go even be possible? The problem isn't rewriting Dalvik in Go or language X,Y,Z.The problem is the APIs used by Google -- and Oracle copyright claims on them. Furthermore Dalvik supports most languages of the JVM so do you really want to impose a single language in place of Java, Clojure, Kotlin, Scala, Jruby, Jython and many more ? do you think all the programmers using these languages would be happy if forced to migrate to Go ? Ask yourself that question.

drivingmenuts 11y ago
They probably wouldn't but then again, they're taunting the lawnmower (mentioned above) and seem to forget that the lawnmower has a lot of money and willpower. I'd say it's time they dumped that lawnmower and came up with something to replace it.
- aikah 11y ago
  They also had the money to buy Sun Microsystems , they didn't. They had the money to use something else than Java on Android , they didn't. They're not going to move to Go, they'll just pay and make a deal if Oracle wins.
fauigerzigerk 11y ago
Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code than to Dalvik/ART byte code? Using Go as a compilation target would allow other languages to benefit from structured value types and goroutines.
- aikah 11y ago
  > Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code And who's going to write a Java/Clojure/Scala/Jyton/JRuby/Kotlin/ to Go compiler ? when Google couldn't even write their own language for the android plateform at first place ?
  - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
    If a platform is popular, language creators will want their languages to run on it, especially if that platform solves some of the problems the old platform has (like excessive memory consumption in the case of Java). Rich Hickey has complained about the lack of composite value types for instance, and I can imagine that many language creators would love to use green threads based concurrency without actually having to write the low level code for it. Go is a minimalist language. Many people want more sophisticated type systems and other modern features. So there's a great opportunity for other languages to stand out without having to compete with Go itself. Every time Java adds some functional programming support, the Scala community has to defend its raison d'etre. There would be no such issues with Go and that alone would be a real incentive for language designers to put work into a compiler.
    - aikah 11y ago
      > There would be no such issues with Go and that alone would be a real incentive for language designers to put work into a compiler. I don't know what you're talking about. You can use Go to write android apps already so let the people that like other languages already supported by Android do the same. Nobody's going to rewrite Java or Scala in Go. As I said earlier, if Google wanted to do that it would have done that 5 years ago. They are clearly not interested in betting all their mobile strategy on a niche language.
      - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
        I'm not saying it is going to happen or that it has no drawbacks. What I'm saying is that Go has some benefits as a compilation target. And no, you can not write Android SDK apps entirely in Go today. What you can do is write a library or command line tool and call it from a Java app.

by aikah 11y ago

drivingmenuts 11y ago

They probably wouldn't but then again, they're taunting the lawnmower (mentioned above) and seem to forget that the lawnmower has a lot of money and willpower. I'd say it's time they dumped that lawnmower and came up with something to replace it.

aikah 11y ago
They also had the money to buy Sun Microsystems , they didn't. They had the money to use something else than Java on Android , they didn't. They're not going to move to Go, they'll just pay and make a deal if Oracle wins.

fauigerzigerk 11y ago

Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code than to Dalvik/ART byte code? Using Go as a compilation target would allow other languages to benefit from structured value types and goroutines.

aikah 11y ago
> Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code And who's going to write a Java/Clojure/Scala/Jyton/JRuby/Kotlin/ to Go compiler ? when Google couldn't even write their own language for the android plateform at first place ?
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  If a platform is popular, language creators will want their languages to run on it, especially if that platform solves some of the problems the old platform has (like excessive memory consumption in the case of Java). Rich Hickey has complained about the lack of composite value types for instance, and I can imagine that many language creators would love to use green threads based concurrency without actually having to write the low level code for it. Go is a minimalist language. Many people want more sophisticated type systems and other modern features. So there's a great opportunity for other languages to stand out without having to compete with Go itself. Every time Java adds some functional programming support, the Scala community has to defend its raison d'etre. There would be no such issues with Go and that alone would be a real incentive for language designers to put work into a compiler.
  - aikah 11y ago
    > There would be no such issues with Go and that alone would be a real incentive for language designers to put work into a compiler. I don't know what you're talking about. You can use Go to write android apps already so let the people that like other languages already supported by Android do the same. Nobody's going to rewrite Java or Scala in Go. As I said earlier, if Google wanted to do that it would have done that 5 years ago. They are clearly not interested in betting all their mobile strategy on a niche language.
    - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
      I'm not saying it is going to happen or that it has no drawbacks. What I'm saying is that Go has some benefits as a compilation target. And no, you can not write Android SDK apps entirely in Go today. What you can do is write a library or command line tool and call it from a Java app.