Future of Java in Android

What is the future of Java (Java 8 or plus) in android after the arrival of Kotlin.

One thing is for sure. If java wants to keep being a player, the following will need to happen:

  • More regular language feature updates
  • A reliable way to make those new language features available on old JVMs/Android versions

I think that is very important in regards to Android development.

This would probably mean that the development of Java as a language needs to separate from the development of the jvm. They need to evolve Independently from each other.

Is it Kotlin powerfull enough so it can replace the Java (an old but a consistent player) in Android development.

Well I don’t believe Kotlin will replace Java anytime soon. Afterall , the whole Android APIs are written in Java. Also, Kotlin is (in Android) meant to work alongside Java.

Google was hiring Kotlin developers to work an Android API.

Two interesting articles:

So the transition seems to have already started (at least for Android). There was another recent statement from someone at JetBrains that adoption is fairly equally split 50/50 between Kotlin apps on Android vs. JVM