[rogerbinns]

Depends why you are doing development. Ultimately it is going to be about potential market and profitability. (Yes there are some "hobbyists" doing it for fun but they are not particularly relevant.)

You don't have to write Android apps in Java - that is just the normal way of doing it. You can write them in anything that is executed by native code including C, C++, C# (Mono) and there are many engines available including ones for Adobe Flash, Unity (C#) and even apportable.com which lets you use Objective C as has reimplemented the iOS APIs on Android. Google also have a SL4A that lets you use Python, or you could compile Python yourself.

If you want real pain, try doing Blackberry development, where you had no choice but Java, crappy APIs, overzealous procedures and crummy dev environment.

The hardest part of Android development isn't the code writing but user support - Android Market plays up, various devices you have never heard have quirks/bugs, feature support varies etc.