Comment by pjmlp

5 days ago

Google basically played a J++ with Android Java, with Kotlin as their .NET/C#.

At least they are forced to partially update Android Java, now Java 17 subset, so that Kotlin can keep up with was is mostly deployed at Maven Central.

20 comments

pjmlp

Reply
cogman10  5 days ago

Pretty sure they did a J# ;). But I agree that Kotlin is their C#.

The JDK and JVM has advanced so fast while android has been lagging. It's pretty frustrating, especially because google has been so slow to pull in changes from later java versions.

A part of me wishes that android would just dump their hokey dalvik, ART, and other BS and just use the OpenJDK or a fork of the OpenJDK with whatever special sauce they need. A lot of the project Leyden stuff lends itself nicely to maybe someday being able to run real java on android.

Edit: Apparently android is forking OpenJDK, since Android 7.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Nougat

  • hencq  5 days ago

    J++ predates C#. It was Microsoft's version of Java that wasn't quite compatible.

    • cogman10  5 days ago

      Correct, and J# was a brief transition language to help migrate Visual J++ applications onto the .Net SDK. J++ -> J# -> C# was the evolution.

      I say J# is a more apt comparison because like Microsoft's Java, android has a substantial set of APIs that aren't part of the JDK standard. Working on Java vs Anrdoid is practically like working with the JDK vs .Net.

      1 reply →

  • pjmlp  5 days ago

    J# was the transition product to port J++ into .NET, I am quite sure.

    Not only I was there on those years, my employer was a MSFT partner that got to test .NET before it was announced to the world, so that we could have our products as part of the announcement event in Portugal.

    OpenJDK is cherry picked, Google only picks pieces of it, rather than full compatibility.

    • rossjudson  5 days ago

      No idea what you are talking about. Google internally has a massive amount of code based on JDK 21, and the (amazing and completely transparent move) to JDK 25 is nearly complete.

      That's the full OpenJDK @ Google, and it has been for a very long time.

      1 reply →

cyberax  5 days ago

> Google basically played a J++ with Android Java

No, they didn't. Google happily used regular Java until Oracle played Oracle. Then Google stopped updating the supported Java language version and started diversifying away from Java.

  • pjmlp  5 days ago

    They definitely did not, it was Android Java from day one, and Oracle should have crushed them like Sun did to Microsoft, unfortunately Google was the geek darling of do not evil, thus they got a pass from fanboys.

    • cyberax  5 days ago

      Android was not 100% compatible with Java, but mostly because it had a specialized environment. It did not support things like dynamic bytecode generation, but it faithfully reproduced pretty much everything else that made sense.

      And yeah, it would have been so much better with Oracle(tm)(r)(c)(fuckyou) running Android with Pure Java(tm)(r)(c)(screwyou) instead. Now with EJB5 and more XML!

      You might be too young to remember, but SunOracle essentially abandoned the Java language development for more than a decade, until Kotlin provided a very much needed magic kick.

      Oh, and if you think _Google_ is bad for splitting the Java ecosystem, let me introduce you to J2ME and JavaCard.

      2 replies →

    • geodel  5 days ago

      Oracle's Java Mobile Edition could've crushed Android. No one stopped them.

      > Google was the geek darling of do not evil, thus they got a pass from fanboys.

      Oracle's case against Google went all the way up to Supreme Court of US. Oracle did not win anything substantial in courts against Google is not fanboys' doing.

      1 reply →