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by colig 4317 days ago
Um, people have already been able to use Scala to make Android applications. Just about anything that doesn't require dynamically generated JVM bytecode can manage, difficult and error-prone as it is.

If we're talking about official support, then I'd rather Java 8 instead. And beefing up ART even more.

3 comments

To me, Scala just feels like a mess. Java 8 isn't as modern as I'd like, but just having lambda expressions and declarative syntax would boost the quality of life so much.
Technically speaking, Android doesn't fully support Java 6. It's only a partial implementation of Java, since Java is overweight. The Android team has been adding requested features to the SDK in piecemeal form.

With that said, you can already get Java 8 lambdas in Android using the retrolambda project.

http://zserge.com/blog/android-lambda.html

How does this work with a jar which contains classes using java8 features? Will it work in this situation or is it only for classes to be compiled? Can retrolambda be applied in other situations to keep the java version at 6 but use java 8 features?
On the same session, I linked here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8192611

The answer to Java 8+ support was "No comment".