Google I/O 2014 - Android fireside chat

26min into the 2014 Google I/O Android fireside chat: ▶ this video Q: So I was wondering if you guys at any point considered the support -- the official support -- of the Scala programming language. I'm asking this question especially now that we all saw that Apple released Swift after 4 years of work. And I think that Swift allows for things for iOS developers that we can't do in Java with the Android SDK. So my question was: have you ever thought about it before -- the release of Swift? Have you thought about it after that? Is there any plan? Android answer 1: Well, so, I like Cocoa, but Objective-C is based on C, which is 40 years old, so I think Apple sort of had to, like, update it a bit. Umm, so, yeah [laugh], I don't know. Scala -- I don't know. Anyone want to take that? [Android team laughs] Android answer 2: [loudly] No. [room laughs, claps] Alright, seriously, it's -- Java is the programming language for Android. I don't really think there's a lot of benefit to -- the entire framework is built around the Java programming language and I don't really -- I don't think there's much benefit for us to try to support another whole -- another different language. Person from answer 1: What about Swift? [room laughs] Person from answer 2: [jokingly] I'll think about it. Person from answer 1: [mockingly] It's got optional semi-colons. Person from answer 2: You have the NDK so you can throw something there. But the NDK -- it doesn't have access to the framework, and that's kind of t

This reminds me of the recent fireside android chat at I/O where someone said something like "I need to be prepared for although I got the permission, it might not be there". ...and they said "We work on the Play Store, and uh... that's not something we have any idea about" "No, I think he's talking about the ROM's that let you take a permission away. Wanna talk about AppOps?" Everyone looks awkward. 'No'. Ok... let's quickly talk about something else instead. (watch it here. Fun times. ▶ this video )

Yes, ▶ this video - Java is the official language, that is what the team has invested into - You can use the NDK for your favorite language, but beware that you are required to use JNI anyway for Android APIs - Not possible to do any comment regarding Java 8 support. - Only use Scala for business logic, no tooling support plans