What is the current state of D for android development?

[Paulo Pinto]

On 30.03.2013 05:58, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:45:33 +0100
> Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote:
>
>> On 28.03.2013 07:13, js.mdnq wrote:
>>> I would like to get into writing apps for android and would like to
>>> choose D for this if it is mature enough.
>>>
>>> What is the D progress on the android?
>>>
>>> I see that at least others are interested but not finding a ton of
>>> information:
>>>
>>> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/20120204203109.26c9a80b@jpf-laptop?page=1
>>
>> Please note that native development in Android has a second class
>> status.
>>
>> Support is only available as a means to bring "legacy" C and C++ code
>> to the platform.
>>
>> The few Android APIs available to languages outside the Dalvik world
>> are actually wrappers around JNI calls.
>>
>
> That's actually something that's been rolling around in my head for
> months, and now that it's brought up again, I have to just go ahead and
> say it:
>
> What...the *FUCK* is Google thinking???
>
> How is it *possible* that the one company in the word that's been
> known, more than any other, for recruiting as many of the supposedly
> best and brightest developers in the world as they possibly can,
> portrayed by approximately...everyone in the world...as being
> practically a developer's utopia, with nary a pointy-hair in sight, and
> the streets paved with latte, can be so incredibly dumb as to decide
> "Hey, let's make our system API be *JVM-only* (ok, "JVM-knockoff",
> whatever, like it even matters) and marginalize native in general, and
> shit all over the idea of being anything more than halfway Posix"??
> Even *Apple* isn't that goddamn stupid, for crap's sakes, and *Apple*
> was never a developer's company, it was run by a dicatoring *salesman*!
> A drugged-out fucking *salesman* for fuck's sakes, and even *they*
> didn't botch things up *that* badly!
>
> Not only that, but this is the same - apparently schizophrenic -
> company that's been trying to push the *Google* **NATIVE** **CLIENT**,
> ie NaCl!!
>
> [Just insert a mental image right here of Lewis Black's trademark
> freak-out saying "What...the...FUUUCK?!?']
>
> Sheesh.
>
> Sorry, had to get it outta my system...
>

Personally my issue is another one.

I don't mind that they use Java (the language), but I think that instead 
of having the effort of implementing Dalvik, they could
have implemented a native code compiler instead.

This way the platform would be fully native.

This is Microsoft current approach, regardless of C++ or .NET, since
Windows Phone 8, everything is compiled to native code.

As for POSIX compatibility, it is oversold. You only have APIs for
command line applications and daemons, and like any standard, it has
undefined behaviors, with each vendor having a different idea what POSIX
means.

Nowadays they could even support Go in the platform, but the Android 
group does not seem to care that much (issue was created by me).

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39482

--
Paulo