She mentions that we should think of the android apis as a "system framework", and I remember a different Google Android engineer saying something similar about the RecyclerView, that right now the focus is on making the technical functionality and API solid and stable, even if not so developer friendly. Someone else, or future Google, can make a more developer friendly API on top of the awkward RecyclerView API. The problem with designing APIs that aren't really meant for app developers, but instead for higher level framework developers, is that those higher level frameworks don't actually exist, and even if they did, there's no clear message for developers to follow. Less choices, or at least a "recommended" approach, would be valuable.