Python for Android

Re:Python for Android by woadwarrior01 on Thursday August 08, 2013 @12:33PM (#6179991)

I generally agree with everything you're saying. But as a counterpoint, Dynamic typing doesn't necessarily have to translate to more battery consumption. Objective-C is pretty close to Python when it comes to dynamic typing (also similar in ref-counting for memory management).

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Re:Python for Android by jnbiche on Thursday August 08, 2013 @01:53PM (#6180607)

Absolutely correct. Lua, for example, does fine on mobile phones. Python pushes the limit wrt to memory and battery consumption, but if you code conservatively and make judicious use of Cython or native code libraries, you can do OK. Incidentally, Python performance seems just fine for GUI programming on modern mobile phones (based on personal experience). But because of the way you have to package Python/Lua/Ruby programs, it takes a long time to open them. But once they are open, they all do fine (and Lua does fine any way you want to measure it).

As someone developing on Android, I so wish that Google had opted for native code on Android, and a native toolchain SDK, which would have allowed people to use almost whatever language they wanted: C, C++, Python, Lua, Ruby, etc. If that had been the case, I suspect most people would opt to use C or C++ for the backend, and code the frontend GUI in Python, Lua, or Ruby.

And yes, you can use the NDK now, but everything visual has to pass through Java.

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Re:Python for Android by wes-exp on Thursday August 08, 2013 @05:54PM (#6182222)

I so wish that Google had opted for native code on Android, and a native toolchain SDK

100X this. Android's platform APIs are now trapped in Javaland. That is just totally inexcusable.

I sort of imagine the decision to use Java was a conservative one. "No one gets fired for choosing Java". But they forgot the memo that Java is for applications, not systems programming.

Microsoft seemed to be going down the same road some years ago with .Net, only to back out and realize the same thing. Now it's back on C++.

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