On 4 August 2011 08:16, Vince O'Sullivan <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Aug 4, 4:32 am, mP <[email protected]> wrote: > > What other alternatives are there ?.. How could they seriously think > > of ripping out java from Android and replacing it with something > > else ? Wouldnt this have been the dumbest move in history, after > > everything that they and the public have invested in growing the > > platform ? > > It doesn't necessarily need to be something radically different, as > long as it compiles to the Dalvik platform. Perhaps one of the more > popular Java variants, such as Groovy or Scala could be tweaked to fit > the bill. > > I understood "java" in that article to refer to the platform. More specifically, the bytecode format (from which dalvik code is generated) and standard libraries. In this sense, both Groovy and Scala *are* Java. Alternatives would then be parrot, LLVM, the .NET CLR, etc. I think it's fair to say that .NET was completely out of the question, licence wise; while the other possibilities suffer from the lack of a mature standard library. Yes... it's true that Scala compiles to .NET and LLVM code, but the .NET support still leans heavily on Java technology via the IKVM library, and LLVM support is still weak (it's not an officially supported target). The quickest way to get Scala up to speed on LLVM is probably via VMKit. So Scala *could* be used, but would most likely pull in 3rd party libraries that would themselves become part of the lawsuit - just as Apache Harmony did. Of course, the other interpretation is that the article really does refer to Java-the-language. In this case, the determining factor must surely be the strength of (open source) tooling; as demonstrated by the choice to implement android support as an eclipse plugin. Possibly something could be done here via C#/mono, but the ecosystem for Java in this space is still unquestionably much stronger. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
