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Comment by sswezey | Hacker News Reader

This, along with recent Kotlin Native news, lends me to believe Google is investigating some alternative platforms for replacing their dependence on Java APIs and removing any possibility of being further hamstrung by Oracle.

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This news sounds quite opposite to me. Although adding a new language is always a good news but Kotlin won't solve any problems with Oracle, since it is just another JVM language. This news sounds like Google is going for an easier way instead of ditching Oracle stuff.

It does open up a path for a possible future migration to Kotlin Native (in several steps), but that's really just wild speculation.

> since it is just another JVM language

Not for long, they're working on Kotlin Native which will make it completely independent from the JVM and portable to all platforms. Killer.

That's with Kotlin's much smaller runtime. It's the stdlib that matters, not the language. Which is why the JVM or an emulated version of it will be around on Android for a long time.

That has no value for Google. If Google wanted to get rid of JVM technology and idioms on Android then it would be better off with pure native language like Swift/Rust/Go. They all are quite further away from Javaism. Kotlin's great value is mostly because it is Java like and run on JVM.

Kotlin supports automated conversion of Java into Kotlin code.

This means you could quickly transform any existing app into a Kotlin Native app quickly.

Exactly, this sounds like just the right move to me if you're Google and would like to see a nice transition period out of the Java dependency, but until then, also support JVM. I'm sure such a move wouldn't come abruptly. Would be cool if they could get that strategic move and a more fun/productive language than Java in the same bang.

And yet Microsoft did .NET Native precisely to target mobile platforms.

Why do you think that natively compiled Kotlin would be slower than Go, anyway?

The difference being (I assume), that Microsoft has ownership of the entire .Net stdlib. The current android framework relies heavily on the java stdlib, which means that any attempt at a different language would have to bring a full rewrite of the framework itself.

I think you're reading too much into this. The only reason they adopted Kotlin was because Android devs were already using it. Jake Wharton, one of the most well-known Android developers, has also been a vocal supporter of the language for a long time, so much so that Google actually invited him to give a talk about it at I/O this year - I have never seen Google invite a community member like this before.

Source: I've been developing Android apps for 2 years and closely follow all developments in the community.

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