Re:Kotlin M7
by lmm on Thursday March 20, 2014 @11:08AM
(#7435956)
I'm not really seeing the case for Kotlin. If I want the most powerful language possible on the JVM, I use Scala. If I want a clean and elegant language, I use Ceylon - I don't think you can get that from a language that keeps the Java standard library. Prior to Java 8 I could maybe see the case for a language that's just Java with lambda and a few other niceties, but now that Java 8's out, if I'm going to go to the trouble of switching to a new language I want a bigger return on that cost than Kotlin offers.
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A good alternative for Java on Android given Google's fork and not so good support for Scala and Clojure on Dalvik/ART?
Oh, I just wrote my (one, rather simple) android app in Scala. Are there problems with it?
Executables are slower and bigger than Java even with ProGuard, specially given how outdated Dalvik GC/JIT are.
Maybe this will improve with ART.
Maybe they are slower to some extend, but for most cases it won't matter too much. I wrote simple game in scala and it was easy to constantly get 55-60 fps on newer devices: https://github.com/pkukielka/stronghold-defense
That being said I agree that jars are bigger and scala generates much more anonymous classes. Even with ProGuard that could be a problem on Android 2.3 or older. And ProGuard is a bit slow (for my game it was taking 30+ seconds for every build). Also Typesafe doesn't have plans for making scala first class citizen of Android.
So while Android development with scala is certainly possible there are few inconveniences which one should be aware of.
Re:Kotlin M7
by thescrewdriver on Thursday March 20, 2014 @12:43PM
(#7436734)
It tends to generate lots of anonymous classes, which can make your jar bigger.