Google Reaffirms Commitment To Kotlin Programming Language For Android

[tildearrow]

Remember back before "Material Design" when Android apps were often only a couple hundred kilobytes?

Yes, I do...
But why would Material Design be an extra weight? Extra libraries?
I mean, isn't it supposed to be simpler than the old one?

[cynical]

It's only supported on Android 7.0+ - Google Play itself supports a minimum of Android 4.0, and most app developers probably have Lollipop/Kitkat/Jellybean as their minSDK.

Good point, I always forget the update situation on Android since I used a Nexus/Pixel when I was using that platform.

[uid313]

That part's optional - it's more of a convenience - if you only have a single, simple constructor with a few arguments, you can define it right there.

Oh, yeah I kind find that part of Kotlin a bit weird. Kotlin is a bit weird.
I kind of like the "There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it." philosophy of Python.

[uid313]

The Android SDK supports Java 8 now. I don’t see the point of Kotlin really. Modern Java is nicer to look at, it just needs support for records to get approved to help eliminate some more boilerplate and it’ll be in a good place.

I think it is only a subset of Java 8, not all of it. Also Java 8 is outdated, now there is Java 13.
It doesn't support type interference, so the code gets repetitive since you can't use the var keyword. It doesn't have support for properties with getter/setters either. I much prefer C# over Java.

[bug77]

Good point, I always forget the update situation on Android since I used a Nexus/Pixel when I was using that platform.

I doubt it's as bad as Guest claims. About 25% of the phones out there run Lollipop or older Android versions (https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards) and those that do are probably sporting old enough hardware that they wouldn't be able to run modern apps anyway.
Sure, I'd like to see 90%+ of the devices running the latest version as much as the next guy, I'm saying, it's not that grim, all things considered,.

Oh, yeah I kind find that part of Kotlin a bit weird. Kotlin is a bit weird.
I kind of like the "There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it." philosophy of Python.

I like the whole Zen of Python (for those that don't know it: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/). I like the second and third to last best.

[Guest]

Is its even possible to build an Android Kotlin project offline? Last time I checked, the whole system was so incredibly dependent on external information (thus non-deterministic), you could never rely on it professionally.

Nah, NDK cross compiler and Makefiles for us. Android's "build system" (if you can call it that) and internet consumer tech like Kotlin are a waste of time.

??? It depends on how you specify your dependencies.

The Gradle build system is also quite deterministic, especially if you use the Gradle wrapper. You get the same build on every machine, regardless of OS and performance.

[bug77]

Yes, I do...
But why would Material Design be an extra weight? Extra libraries?
I mean, isn't it supposed to be simpler than the old one?

If anything, Material Design should shrink the size of an app, because most assets are now preinstalled, eliminating the need to package them.

[Guest]

If anything, Material Design should shrink the size of an app, because most assets are now preinstalled, eliminating the need to package them.

Uh no, they need to include components that work regardless of Android version, and across multiple devices. They also don't know what kind of weird custom changes OEMs make.

While they can depend on some platform code, they can't depend on it entirely.

So, it definitely won't shrink the size of an app.

[bug77]

Uh no, they need to include components that work regardless of Android version, and across multiple devices. They also don't know what kind of weird custom changes OEMs make.

While they can depend on some platform code, they can't depend on it entirely.

So, it definitely won't shrink the size of an app.

I disagree. Material Design assets come with everything released in the past 5 years or so and, while 3rd parties can customize Android, they're not allowed to remove from the official distribution. It's guaranteed they're available. You will only need to include custom widgets you've developed on top of the standard ones (and CSS + images to go with them if needed).
In fact, what you're describing is some Chinese software that I have seen that was showing WinXP decorations when run on Win7 - they weren't using the platform supplied widgets, they were using wrong widgets because they needlessly packaged them into the app.

[coder]

I like the whole Zen of Python (for those that don't know it: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/). I like the second and third to last best.

Heh, I didn't know about:

>>> import this