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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

What would you have chosen? Java is popular, featureful (have fun allocating memory with objective-c while working on iOS apps!) and fast. I'd bet that it got more people interested than turned off.

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> Java is popular, featureful (have fun allocating memory with objective-c while working on iOS apps!) and fast.

More importantly, it's the most popular VM to target for new language implementations. You can use Rhino, Python, Lua, Scala, Scheme, Clojure, Fantom, Frink, and others on it.

With a substantial speed penalty on Dalvik.

True in cases where code relies on Hotspot's server JIT and GC, but the fidelity of the JVM->Dalvik bytecode conversion is remarkable.

Java is popular in the broad sense, but it doesn't seem to be very popular with the developers I know that are creating and interested in creating mobile apps.

Is that because they are iPhone users or because Objective-C is a better language for mobile development?

Probably a combination of iPhone's traction and the general negative sentiment towards Java. I personally feel Objective-C is a good fit for mobile development, because its so easy to drop down to C at any time. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks its conceptually simpler than Java (The Obj-C all just C structs and functions under the hood).

I think it's general sentiment against Java, the language. Many I know, including me, have been there and don't want to go back. At the same time the JVM is a pretty interesting space for language runtime.

Even if its not well liked in the most tech forward circles that may be the most desirable audience for google, there should at least be familiarity with it. And I don't know about you but I can't think of any even halfway decent and plausible alternative google could have chosen.

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