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Another, imho, more appealing Swift on Android is Kotlin http://kotlinlang.org/ http://kotlinlang.org/ It shares many features with Xtend but offers more. It h

by newgame 12y ago

Another, imho, more appealing Swift on Android is Kotlin http://kotlinlang.org/ http://kotlinlang.org/ It shares many features with Xtend but offers more. It has the opposite "problem" wrt IDE support though: Great IDEA support but no Eclipse support.

staltz 12y ago
Does it compile to Java source code?
- theGimp 12y ago
  According to the FAQ page, it compiles to Java bytecode. Is it Java Compatible? Yes. The compiler emits Java byte-code. http://kotlin-web-site.jetbrains.org/docs/reference/faq.html http://kotlin-web-site.jetbrains.org/docs/reference/faq.html
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    Does that violate the new ruling in favor of Oracle lately? If not, what if Oracle pursues that in the future, too? If I were Google I'd be like on needles about continuing to support Java on Android, and I'd start looking for a complete replacement (which will take years to come to fruition anyway, so all the more reason to start now).
- sspiff 12y ago
  I can't find any information right now, but I believe it statically compiles to Java bytecode, which means it can easily be dex'ed offline. It wouldn't make sense to not support Android in a JVM language of 2014, honestly.
artificialidiot 12y ago
I don't know how kotlin fares in practice for android, but I experimented with scala on android a few years back successfully. The thing is, android doesn't really need a marketing blitz as big for alternative languages to be usable. dex converter did well enough on jvm bytecode.
jtietema 12y ago
I am building a side project app in Kotlin right now and so far it goes well. There are some minor problems with IDE support (kotlin source folder is not marked as a source folder when mixing Android and Kotlin together), but that is fixed with one click of a button. I really like it!
billylindeman 12y ago
Kotlin looks amazing! I'm about to try it out.
lobo42 12y ago
Kotlin for instance doesn't support something similar to active annotations aka compile-time macros. This is a very powerful concept. Here's an example of an annotation from the Xtendroid project (https://github.com/tobykurien/Xtendroid/blob/master/examples/HandlerExample/src/org/xtendroid/example/handlerexample/ProgressTestActivity.xtend https://github.com/tobykurien/Xtendroid/blob/master/examples...)

by newgame 12y ago

staltz 12y ago

Does it compile to Java source code?

theGimp 12y ago
According to the FAQ page, it compiles to Java bytecode. Is it Java Compatible? Yes. The compiler emits Java byte-code. http://kotlin-web-site.jetbrains.org/docs/reference/faq.html http://kotlin-web-site.jetbrains.org/docs/reference/faq.html
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Does that violate the new ruling in favor of Oracle lately? If not, what if Oracle pursues that in the future, too? If I were Google I'd be like on needles about continuing to support Java on Android, and I'd start looking for a complete replacement (which will take years to come to fruition anyway, so all the more reason to start now).
sspiff 12y ago
I can't find any information right now, but I believe it statically compiles to Java bytecode, which means it can easily be dex'ed offline. It wouldn't make sense to not support Android in a JVM language of 2014, honestly.

artificialidiot 12y ago

I don't know how kotlin fares in practice for android, but I experimented with scala on android a few years back successfully. The thing is, android doesn't really need a marketing blitz as big for alternative languages to be usable. dex converter did well enough on jvm bytecode.

jtietema 12y ago

I am building a side project app in Kotlin right now and so far it goes well. There are some minor problems with IDE support (kotlin source folder is not marked as a source folder when mixing Android and Kotlin together), but that is fixed with one click of a button. I really like it!

billylindeman 12y ago

Kotlin looks amazing! I'm about to try it out.

lobo42 12y ago

Kotlin for instance doesn't support something similar to active annotations aka compile-time macros. This is a very powerful concept. Here's an example of an annotation from the Xtendroid project (https://github.com/tobykurien/Xtendroid/blob/master/examples/HandlerExample/src/org/xtendroid/example/handlerexample/ProgressTestActivity.xtend https://github.com/tobykurien/Xtendroid/blob/master/examples...)