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> "But now they seem to have lost traction and are likely to go out of fashion." That is one way of looking at it - an alternative interpretation is that mobil

by AJRF 1y ago

> "But now they seem to have lost traction and are likely to go out of fashion." That is one way of looking at it - an alternative interpretation is that mobile development has hit a plateau. I don't think someone starting an iOS or Android app today would pick Objective-C/Java, but maybe there are less mobile apps being made today? To sum up what I am saying: They won't disappear but they won't rise again. Anyone got good data on this?

grishka 1y ago
I still write Android apps exclusively in Java, albeit it's Java 17. The most recent new app I started was in 2022. I don't know Kotlin and don't want to know it. The one time I had to deal with an app with parts of it in Kotlin, doing anything in those parts felt like coding through molasses.
- ebiester 1y ago
  So, as someone who only knows the basics of the android ecosystem, are you able to compile down to lower target versions and still use the Java 17 niceties? As I understand it, most people were using Kotlin because the alternative was java 8, and the syntactic sugar made it worth migrating.
  - grishka 1y ago
    Yes. In one instance I used Java 17 in an app that ran on as low as Android 4.2, and it did work just fine on an actual Galaxy Nexus. My current app's minSdk is Android 6. Though there are caveats: you can't use records (because they extend the new class java.lang.Record that desugaring library doesn't contain) and sealed classes (presumably because they require extra checks by the class loader). edit: records actually work now, with compileSdk set to 35 edit2: and sealed classes now work too. I tested both on a Samsung Galaxy S9 running Android 10, but the decompiled code looks very much Java 6 compatible so it should run on anything
vbezhenar 1y ago
I write Java for Android. But I'm more like jack of all trades, I'm not specializing on Android development. I know Kotlin, but it's too complex for my taste, so I'm avoiding it, Java works just fine. Actually the same for iOS and Objective C. I learned Objective C like 15 years ago and it didn't change much since then. I also learned Swift the day it was released and I know nothing about modern Swift, it changes so fast. I don't really care. Objective C works just fine for me too.

by AJRF 1y ago

grishka 1y ago

I still write Android apps exclusively in Java, albeit it's Java 17. The most recent new app I started was in 2022. I don't know Kotlin and don't want to know it. The one time I had to deal with an app with parts of it in Kotlin, doing anything in those parts felt like coding through molasses.

ebiester 1y ago
So, as someone who only knows the basics of the android ecosystem, are you able to compile down to lower target versions and still use the Java 17 niceties? As I understand it, most people were using Kotlin because the alternative was java 8, and the syntactic sugar made it worth migrating.
- grishka 1y ago
  Yes. In one instance I used Java 17 in an app that ran on as low as Android 4.2, and it did work just fine on an actual Galaxy Nexus. My current app's minSdk is Android 6. Though there are caveats: you can't use records (because they extend the new class java.lang.Record that desugaring library doesn't contain) and sealed classes (presumably because they require extra checks by the class loader). edit: records actually work now, with compileSdk set to 35 edit2: and sealed classes now work too. I tested both on a Samsung Galaxy S9 running Android 10, but the decompiled code looks very much Java 6 compatible so it should run on anything

vbezhenar 1y ago

I write Java for Android. But I'm more like jack of all trades, I'm not specializing on Android development. I know Kotlin, but it's too complex for my taste, so I'm avoiding it, Java works just fine. Actually the same for iOS and Objective C. I learned Objective C like 15 years ago and it didn't change much since then. I also learned Swift the day it was released and I know nothing about modern Swift, it changes so fast. I don't really care. Objective C works just fine for me too.