Since Kotlin has been officially supported by Google for Android, Scala has a strong competition which I hoped to become Java3 one day. https://developer.android.com/kotlin/index.html
Scala 2.12 has moved to Java 8 indeed, however this means modern features that are used for encoding Scala: invokeDynamic and default interface methods.
These should make Scala compiled code faster and more stable in regards to backwards compatibility. Both Java 6 and 7 have need EOLed. We cannot stand still because of Android's shitty support.
Google has effectively fractured the ecosystem, pulling off what Microsoft couldn't do with J#, and they got away with it. I actually think that they preferred to announce Kotlin as being a first class citizen as a marketing trick in order to offset the lack of support for Java 8.
Even so, Scala does in fact have great Android support:
1. Scala 2.11 will remain supported for some time, language-level features have already been backported from 2.12 and Typelevel.org also has a commitment to support it even further
2. We have great integration with the tool chain, see https://github.com/scala-android/sbt-android
3. For a pretty cool open source project made with Scala, that uses functional programming libraries like Cats and Monix, see: http://www.9cards.io
So if you think about it, given all the other tooling available, compared with other languages Scala actually has stellar support, along with actual projects ;-)
Even though I very much wanted this to be true, that promise has been broken. Scala 2.11 has been EOL'ed 3 months ago with 2.11.11.
Mostly because of the SV love, that Microsoft lacked.
Sun and Oracle were right all along.
> Even so, Scala does in fact have great Android support:
I don't agree with it, because for me having to deal with SBT, outdated android plugins in InteliJ and GUI DSLs instead of Gradle, Android Studio and Studio GUI designer isn't a synonym for great.
Maybe it changed during the last two years, but that was the scenario I faced.
InteliJ is always behind Android Studio, specially Canary version.
Finally getting some kind of official support for Java 8 and addition of Kotlin solved that problem.
Or because one is the official language for targeting the most popular consumer OS in the world, whereas the other is just a transitional language that has no real advantages over the alternatives for the same platform.
So they can get away with what Microsoft wasn't allowed to do , I get it.
It is sad that Oracle's legal could not deliver on copyright or patent cases.