I'm pretty sure that the majority of shops that aren't worrying about Android have moved on from Java 8. The JVM team only keep Java 8 working for customers paying them lots of money for extended support contracts. And that's only because they have this long-term extended support system for all LTS JVM releases (they are also still supporting 11 in a similar manner).
On the other hand, Android doesn't even support Java 8. It supports the long-dead Java 7 plus a subset of Java 8 features. Android essentially froze their core application runtime in amber over ten years ago and have just been adding layer upon layer of compiler-level sugar ever since. The effect is an increasing loss of the benefit of being on the Java platform, in terms of code sharing.
I never understood why they do not track the OpenJDK versions. I don't work on Android apps.. but it seems mildly insane to basically have a weird almost-Java where you aren't even sure if you can use a given Java lib.
> I never understood why they do not track the OpenJDK versions. I don't work on Android apps.. but it seems mildly insane to basically have a weird almost-Java where you aren't even sure if you can use a given Java lib.
NIH syndrome
> (and not a Dart chat app.. but something actually performant that uses the hardware to the full extent)
I used to work on Android, quit two years ago and have used Flutter since, it's a breath of fresh air. It does use the hardware to the full extent, imo it's significantly more performant: it does an end-around all the ossified Android nonsense.
Hmm, so if you wanted to make an AR app, or some audio processing app, would you do that in Flutter? All the projects I have in mind involve using the camera/microphone/gps etc. Looking at Dart sample projects it just seemed to be quite different from what they're aiming at
My caffeinated instinct is to say basically "yes I'd do anything in Flutter", I honestly would rather stop coding than go back to anything I've done before (ObjC/Swift/Java/Kotlin with side journeys in C++). It boggles my mind how much of a different job dev is with true hot reload.
More carefully, and dealing with what you're indicating more directly:
There's stuff that we just need every millisecond of performance from.
Generally, Dart's great, I don't notice any difference between iOS / Android standard UI platforms.
But...for example, Flutter's image decoding is actually using "native" code behind the scenes, i.e. calling into C or OS-level APIs or browser APIs as needed on each platform. And there's a Flutter package called "image" that's Dart-native but I abhor because I know it's going to be higher latency than going thru lower-level code. (now I'm wondering how Java does this...I wonder if its JNI...)
Let's do a scenario: I've been contracted to build a bus route app for the local gov't. They want an AR feature. What happens if I choose to build on Flutter, build out the basic features, then get to the AR, and I'm getting 5 fps?"
This might feel convoluted at first, it did to me, but really, all that's going on is: when things are slow, we write a Dart interface, then for each platform where we want to use native code, provide impls of that interface in native.
Yeah, I'm currently developing a Flutter app and also using flutter_rust_bridge to separate the business logic and I can hardly believe how enjoyable it is.
Other than the initial project setup which is a me and Nix flakes problem it all comes together pretty smoothly.
On the other hand, Android doesn't even support Java 8. It supports the long-dead Java 7 plus a subset of Java 8 features. Android essentially froze their core application runtime in amber over ten years ago and have just been adding layer upon layer of compiler-level sugar ever since. The effect is an increasing loss of the benefit of being on the Java platform, in terms of code sharing.