[pjmlp]

Google has no interest in providing the right support for Java developers it seems.

Lack of Java 8 bytecode now, then lack of Java 9 modules tomorrow, and eventually lack of Java 10 value types and improved generics, arrays and JNI replacement.

And of course, lack of many of the SE APIs in any case.

The fun of writing portable libraries between Java and Android Java is only getting better.

[johncolanduoni]

Now that Xamarin is open source, a reasonably stable Java bytecode -> Xamarin-compatible CIL cross-compiler could be pretty useful. It would also solve the problem of varying VM quality between Android versions (especially around the Dalvik to ART transition).

[pjmlp]

I don't feel the pain of lack of modern Java support that much, because I spend most of the time on NDK, but there the tooling support also leaves a lot to be desired, like partial STL support or the whole story regarding build infrastructure.

Xamarin looks a nice proposal out of this mess and as a JVM/.NET/C++ consultant, with focus on native apps, I have been looking into it as possible alternative.

[_pmf_]

I think their legal shenanigans regarding usage of Java technology plays a major role here: they simply do not own Java technology. It was a horrible mistake to use it without Sun's/Oracle's approval and as soon as the first lawsuit ends in favor of Oracle, they will be milked to an extent that has not yet been seen.

[pjmlp]

Every other commercial JDK vendor is able to comply with licenses and still provide language extensions and their own VM stacks. There are quite a few examples to chose from.

Why should Google be a special snowflake that doesn't play by the same rules?

[AnimalMuppet]

Why should they have to play by the same rules? If the rules they are playing by are judged to be legal, what's wrong with what they're doing?

[pjmlp]

To avoid doing a Microsoft move on us that now enjoy the pain of writing not so portable Java code across official standar Java™ and Android devices, thus making a fork in the Java ecosystem.

[geodel]

Well that special snowflake is sued and they are having their day in court. Oracle has extinguished many rivals in court and maybe they will do it again.

[AnimalMuppet]

First, Oracle's legal theories have not held up very well in court.

Second, Oracle has explicitly said that OpenJDK is OK, and Google has shifted to an implementation based on OpenJDK.

So I wouldn't hold my breath for your prediction coming true...

[pjmlp]

> Google has shifted to an implementation based on OpenJDK.

No they have not, just go look at AOSP source code.

Yes they are using it instead of Harmony nowadays, but they are cherry picking features and APIs, instead of providing 100% compatibility with the language standard.