5 ms·

Sounds like good news to me, but I'm not sure why this is not getting more attention. Isn't Java 8 support a huge deal for Android, or am I missing something?

by Cyph0n 10y ago

Rebelgecko 10y ago
They already had something called Jack that let you use java>6 features. It just didn't integrate as well with some parts of the android ecosystem
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
clay_to_n 10y ago
It would be awesome. There are some polyfilling libraries, like Retrolambda for lambdas, and ones to get streams etc already, without actually using Java 8. Jack broke a lot of things on Android (like some annotation libraries, which the article mentions), so I think the wider Android community will be happy there's a clear path forward to Java 8.
- canistr 10y ago
  Enabling Jack also prevented the ability for devs to use Instant Run. It's not a dealbreaker, but combined with all the other broken libraries it definitely added to the frustration with needing/wanting to upgrade to Java 8. I never found it worth upgrading and almost always ignored sample code that showed Jack/Java8 in the gradle files because they didn't seem to be based on real-world usage.
maaaats 10y ago
I don't really care, now that I'm invested in Kotlin.
- ptx 10y ago
  It still seems like good news. If they had decided to focus their efforts on Jack (compiling Java source code directly to Dalvik bytecode) the parts of the toolchain that work with Java bytecode (such as the output of the Kotlin compiler) would have been de-prioritized and might not have been as well supported.
izacus 10y ago
At this point I think any serious shop should be transitioning to Kotlin (just like iOS shops are transitioning to Swift).
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Swift is officially an Apple language. While Kotlin is nowhere to be seen on Android SDK and Google is officially silent on its use. This matters a lot to customers IT departments, writing the set of delivery languages on their Requests For Proposal to consulting companies.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Java and others also aren't "official Google", "Apple", "Microsoft" languages and they still run the whole web. It really question the brokenness of a company processes that refuses to use good tooling just because a corpo didn't tell them to. Kotlin is full interoperable with Java APIs and libraries and at this point there's really very few cases where it's not a significantly better choice for Android development.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      It is not the question of telling to, it is the question of accepting to sign the contract at all, or pay at the end.
    - nradov 10y ago
      That's true for now. But there's nothing stopping Google from making changes to Android which break Kotlin support in ways we could never predict. From that standpoint, Java seems much less risky if you're building a large app that you expect to have to maintain and support for years to come.
      - SureshG 10y ago
        > But there's nothing stopping Google from making changes to Android which break Kotlin support It won't, that's what they addressed in this post by ditching jack and switching back to javac bytecode. "Over time, we realized the cost of switching to Jack was too high for our community when we considered the annotation processors, bytecode analyzers and rewriters impacted."

Sounds like good news to me, but I'm not sure why this is not getting more attention. Isn't Java 8 support a huge deal for Android, or am I missing something?

by Cyph0n 10y ago

Sounds like good news to me, but I'm not sure why this is not getting more attention. Isn't Java 8 support a huge deal for Android, or am I missing something?

Rebelgecko 10y ago

They already had something called Jack that let you use java>6 features. It just didn't integrate as well with some parts of the android ecosystem

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

clay_to_n 10y ago

It would be awesome. There are some polyfilling libraries, like Retrolambda for lambdas, and ones to get streams etc already, without actually using Java 8. Jack broke a lot of things on Android (like some annotation libraries, which the article mentions), so I think the wider Android community will be happy there's a clear path forward to Java 8.

canistr 10y ago
Enabling Jack also prevented the ability for devs to use Instant Run. It's not a dealbreaker, but combined with all the other broken libraries it definitely added to the frustration with needing/wanting to upgrade to Java 8. I never found it worth upgrading and almost always ignored sample code that showed Jack/Java8 in the gradle files because they didn't seem to be based on real-world usage.

maaaats 10y ago

I don't really care, now that I'm invested in Kotlin.

ptx 10y ago
It still seems like good news. If they had decided to focus their efforts on Jack (compiling Java source code directly to Dalvik bytecode) the parts of the toolchain that work with Java bytecode (such as the output of the Kotlin compiler) would have been de-prioritized and might not have been as well supported.

izacus 10y ago

At this point I think any serious shop should be transitioning to Kotlin (just like iOS shops are transitioning to Swift).

pjmlp 10y ago
Swift is officially an Apple language. While Kotlin is nowhere to be seen on Android SDK and Google is officially silent on its use. This matters a lot to customers IT departments, writing the set of delivery languages on their Requests For Proposal to consulting companies.
- izacus 10y ago
  Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Java and others also aren't "official Google", "Apple", "Microsoft" languages and they still run the whole web. It really question the brokenness of a company processes that refuses to use good tooling just because a corpo didn't tell them to. Kotlin is full interoperable with Java APIs and libraries and at this point there's really very few cases where it's not a significantly better choice for Android development.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    It is not the question of telling to, it is the question of accepting to sign the contract at all, or pay at the end.
  - nradov 10y ago
    That's true for now. But there's nothing stopping Google from making changes to Android which break Kotlin support in ways we could never predict. From that standpoint, Java seems much less risky if you're building a large app that you expect to have to maintain and support for years to come.
    - SureshG 10y ago
      > But there's nothing stopping Google from making changes to Android which break Kotlin support It won't, that's what they addressed in this post by ditching jack and switching back to javac bytecode. "Over time, we realized the cost of switching to Jack was too high for our community when we considered the annotation processors, bytecode analyzers and rewriters impacted."