I've done a lot of native development, real native development, not this fluffy Java stuff and Android is still overly complicated in both design and tooling.
My needs as a developer on Android are far from cool and that shouldn't be unnecessarily hard -- but it is.
I dunno, I have a soft spot for Java. Yes, the verbosity can be annoying, but compare that to the scavenger hunt that modern web languages put you on when you're trying to figure out exactly who is doing exactly what.
Don't get me wrong, the inter-application intent stuff is really cool and good, but sometimes, guys, it's all in-app stuff. I need to tightly couple these objects. I need to pass actual non-serializable objects amongst activities within my app. I'm sorry, I just do. Marshalling and de-marshalling data out to a bundle or the database isn't going to cut it.
C++ is not slower than java on constrained hardware, also is more respectful of memory. Is it harder to use? I don't think so but I may be in the minority here.
I get real tired of web soft boys coming into native and complaining about how complicated it is on the metal. This stuff is hard cause you're not just churning html. It's harder work than writing a web page. Sorry.
Specifically, mobile is resource constrained in a way that server-side work just isn't. Your render thread is a hot thread, and you better not jam it up. That one singular concept is the underlying cause of so, so much of the obfuscation and confusion associated with mobile development.
But that's the gig.
No, switching to javascript won't fix it. Switching to javascript will actually make it much worse, as the kinds of industrial grade tools available to make concurrency manageable (though prone to removing fingers from script kiddies or the unwary), to manage memory, to deal with a database directly, to deal with bluetooth devices, on and on are wholly unavailable, or worse still, are abstraction libraries that require you to fluently deal with both your javascript interface and some really deep native interop libraries, lest you be entrapped in cut-and-paste script kiddiehood.
I could go on at length about the myriad pitfalls and difficulties associated with mobile development, but the simple fact is that doing something cool is hard work.