[gernb]

because some people in charge of android mistakenly believed that because some stats claimed Java was the most popular language that chosing Java would lead to the most developers for android (and then they chose Kotlin later beacuse it's a better Java and compatible with the JVM)

IMO, choosing Java was one of the worst decisions they ever made. There's a reason why no other platform (PS5, XBox, iPhone, Mac, Linux, etc..) don't choose a language like Java. Android has so much jank because they chose Java

[zozbot234]

Choosing Java made a lot of sense when Android got started. The binary architecture for mobile devices was not standard in any way, ARM, MIPS, x86 were all in common use at some time or another. And nowadays AArch64 (which is not the same as older ARM) is quite widespread. Plus there was nothing like WASM back then, so if you wanted binary independence for apps and the like you were stuck with something very much like Java.