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Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

I primarily use "Java" on Android. I'm very excited to see the language progressing. Recently, I read Gosling gave Oracle a B+ on stewardship of the language:

http://www.javaworld.com/article/2087444/open-source-tools/j...

However, I'm getting pretty nervous with the lack of conformance Android Java has to the real Java stack. The two are diverging, and I don't see how Google can remedy this.

My guess is that Java 6 & 7 were modest enough that many developers of open source libraries thought it easy to support a profile that worked on Android.

If Java 8 adoption is as brisk as this poll suggests, with all the features many have been waiting for, I'm worried a lot of the libraries I use may become incompatible with Android.

Already, its hit and miss if a open source java library works on android. I just tried lmax disruptor and it didn't work. Things that depend on NIO.2 won't work either.

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I sincerely hope Google will upgrade the Dalvik compiler to accept Java 8's syntax. My wishful thinking is that they did not find compelling reasons to upgrade the spec to Java 7 since it did not represent a major upgrade when it comes to the core language. It has some definite improvements over Java 6, but there was no true groundbreaking improvement over older Java versions. At least not to the same degree as generics in Java 5 or now lambdas in Java 8.

Besides, Java 8 lambdas should tickle the fancy of Google's engineers. First, it introduces a feature that is already trivially available in Javascript, Python and Go. In addition, remember that Google already develops and heavily uses the Guava library, which introduces the least painful workarounds to use some functional programming in Java, so it seems there is some motivation already.

It would be a pitiful split for the Java community if Google does not adapt Java 8. I fully expect that Java 8 lambdas will change the way Java programming is done. If Google stays with a pure imperative Java, it will likely split the ecosystem in two different languages. Java 7 did not introduce enough language features for this to happen, but Java 8 definitely will.

Yeah, Google seems to be in a awkward space with their Java implementation with Apache depreciating the project it was based on. Right now they just seem to be doing nothing, but at some point they'll have to make a move...

Still too early to tell about adoption. The article wasn't specific enough - it may be that as people find out about Android incompatibilities they hold off their upgrade plans, regardless of their apparent insatiable appetite for lambdas.

Why is Google letting Android Java fall so far behind? Patent/copyright issues?

The worst that could happen is if android drops java as the primary language. I wonder if google is willing to do that, or if they are now too invested in the language to drop it.

I guess that even for Google would be cheaper to just upgrade it to support Java 8 features than to replace it completely with something else. Especially since that "something else" would still need to support all existing apps for a long time to go. Otherwise, they could as well just cancel Android as a whole.

My bet is that sooner or later, Google will drop Java on Android for Node Javascript. It is only a matter of time...

I really don't think google will consider that seriously for the low level. The point of dalvik is to provide a consistent low level platform for arbitrary phone manufacturers to support, which is something the jvm is explicity designed for (in a more abstract manner). Node has an interesting, simple, and effective approach to concurrency, but if I am interpreting your comment correctly I do not think node is the proper choice for a phone platform. Don't mistake an ease of abstraction in one realm for an ease of abstraction in another (specifically abstractions suited towards phone apps versus concurrent processing).

yeah whatever, they will never do that.

Did you forget Google created Dart because Javascript is a stupid mess? Google has at least 2 languages (Dart/Go) to try on before they'd even think about that turd that is javascript. And the list goes on GWT .... Google is definetly a Java shop,doing everything not to code in javascript.

I'm also of the opinion that Google will not replace Java-based Android with nodejs-based Android.

On the other hand, I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of JavaScript development does happen at Google, albeit within the confines of the Closure compiler. Some kind of nodejs project somewhere at Google would not be out of the question. It's a big company. https://www.npmjs.org/package/closurecompiler

my point is given the success of all these javascript only mobile plateforms, it's not going to happen.If one wants to develop js apps,the web is here and free.That's why these weboses make little sense.

Google invest plenty of resources in JavaScript as well - they're active in helping define ECMAScript 6, they created V8 and Angular.js, and they employ a bunch of the world's most talented JavaScript programmers.

I don't see how they would benefit from this sort of sabotage... Switch it to Node and quickly sell it to Microsoft?

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