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Dalvik is a major piece, but nothing is required to use it; there has been native support for a while now. Re-writing all the Android libraries in Go would be a
by pkulak 14y ago
Dalvik is a major piece, but nothing is required to use it; there has been native support for a while now. Re-writing all the Android libraries in Go would be a heck of a project though, and then you'd have to maintain both forever. And I'm not entirely sure what the benefits would be, since I don't really know how Dalvik compares in runtime and memory use to Java 7. It would be pretty awesome though. I actually like Java, but developing mobile apps in Go would be a blast. Plus, Google could get entirely out of this Oracle situation if they transitioned entirely.
- grey-area 14y agoThey'd be better off just starting again with a new minimal stack and API, with the lessons learned from their first iteration of the API (and I'm sure there were lots of things they'd do differently if they had the chance), run it in parallel, and gradually deprecate the old API as the new one gets up to speed, just as Apple has done several times over the past couple of decades (AppKit, UIKit etc). Moving a big group of developers from one API to another can be done, it just takes time, and a little judicious use of pressure... Android now has the installed base for developers to be forced to go along with whatever changes Google requires, and Dalvik could be kept around for quite a while as a backstop. I don't think the problems with Oracle are going away, so this might come to pass eventually, but I doubt it is on the roadmap right now.