Except there is the NDK (http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html) which he points out. It seems like he

Except there is the NDK (http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html) which he points out. It seems like he fails to understand how it works though. It allows parts of the application to be written in C or C++ and hook into the top layer of Java. It isn't "running inside the VM" it's running outside of it and communicating with it. Further, the android platform restrictions are enforced at the kernel level so C and C++ code runs under the same restrictions as those in the VM. It simply allows you to do manual memory management for high performance code.