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What are the best alternatives to Java for Android development?

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11 Options Considered

11 Options ConsideredPricePriceCurrent stable version
Kotlin
Free, Open Source1.2
Clojure
Free, Open Source1.9
Lua
––
Beeware
––
C#
Free (Open Source)7
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Kotlin

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Amazing IDE support

•••
Since Kotlin is made by Jetbrains (the developers of IntelliJ IDEA) so it stands to reason that the IntelliJ support for Kotlin is also great.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Java interoperability

•••
Since it runs on the JVM, Kotlin is 100% interoperable with Java and can use existing Java frameworks and libraries.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

No runtime overhead

•••
Because the standard library is pretty small and tight, it mostly consists of focused extensions of the Java standard library.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Easy to learn if you have prior programming experience

•••
Kotlin's syntax is extremely easy to understand. The language can be picked up in a few hours just by reading the language reference.
gilch
Top Pro

Now officially supported by Google

•••
Muhammad Sami
Top Pro

Great tooling support

•••
Since Kotlin is made by Jetbrains (the developers of IntelliJ IDEA) so it stands to reason that the IntelliJ support for Kotlin is also great. Besides that, Kotlin also works well with existing Java tools such as Eclipse, Maven, Gradle, Android Studio, etc...
Muhammad Sami
Top Pro

Easy adoption for existing Java programmers

•••
Kotlin runs on the JVM and Java interoperability has been one of the main objectives since the language was born. It runs everywhere Java does; web servers, mobile devices (Android), and desktop applications. It also works with all the major tools in the Java ecosystem like Eclipse, IntelliJ, Mave...
Muhammad Sami
Top Pro

Officially supported for Android development

•••
Starting with version 3.0 of Android Studio, Kotlin support will be built-in. This means that it's now easier than ever to use Kotlin for existing Android projects or even start writing Android apps only with Kotlin from scratch. This also means that Kotlin and Kotlin plugins for Android Stud...
Muhammad Sami
Top Pro

Low-risk adoption for existing Java codebases

•••
Since it has such a good interoperability with Java, Java libraries, and Java tools. It can be adopted for an existing Java codebase at little to no cost. The codebase can be converted from Java to Kotlin little by little without ever disrupting the functionality of the application itself.
Muhammad Sami
Top Pro

Does not impose a particular philosophy of programming

•••
It's not overly OOP like Java and it does not enforce strict functional paradigms either.
CAB
Top Pro

Multi platform support

•••
Kotlin code can be compiled into JVM byte code, JavaScript and (soon) Native code. This allow simply share some code between mobile app for Android and iOS as well as server and desktop standalone apps.
Muhammad Sami
Top Con

The need for Java interoperability has forced some limitations

•••
The need to make Kotlin interoperable with Java has caused some unintuitive limitations to the language design.
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Clojure

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Simplicity as a pillar of culture.

•••
Simplicity is one of the pillars on which Clojure is built. Clojure tries to solve many problems in software development as simply as possible. Instead of building complex interfaces, objects or factories, it uses immutability and simple data structures
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Few components of syntax

•••
Lispness makes ClojureScript trivial to comprehend after an initial learning overhead
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Huge ecosystem of libraries to work with

•••
There's a very large ecosystem of high-quality Clojure libraries which developers can use. One example is Incanter. It's a great data analytics library and a very powerful tool for dealing with matrices, datasets and csv files.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Designed for concurrency

•••
Since Clojure is designed for concurrency, it offers things like Software Transaction Memory, functional programming without side-effects and immutable data structures right out of the box. This means that the development team can focus their energies on developing features instead of concurrency d...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Extremely useful tool for automation, configuration and dependency management available out of the box

•••
Leiningen is a very useful tool for Clojure developers. It helps with automation, configuration and dependency management. It's basically a must for every Clojure project.
gilch
Top Pro

Interactive development

•••
You can tweak a program using the REPL while it's running on the device. Other languages make you recompile and reinstall before you can test such things.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Confusing error messages

•••
Clojure's error messages more often than not are very confusing. They usually involve stack traces that do not thoroughly explain where the error was caused or what caused it.
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Lua

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Andris Pelcbergs
Rok
Top Pro

Corona

•••
Corona is probably the main reason why Lua is good for Android development.
Andris Pelcbergs
Rok
Top Pro

LÖVE

•••
LÖVE is another cross platform game framework. Really easy to use, and desktop to Android is almost drag and drop like.
Paolo
EnterprisingEmesh
Top Pro

Overall language

•••
Due to Lua's high performance (fast and small), it is used everywhere: backend application servers (NginX), smartphones (Android and iOS), IOT (embedded electronic devices), database engines (Redis), communication (WireShark). No other language can reach this. Learn Lua and you are ready to go...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Fast

•••
Lua's performance compares very well to other languages, If performance needs to be further improved you can: Implement critical parts in C Use the LuaJIT compiler. The LuaJIT compiler is a drop in replacement for the stock compiler and provides significant performance improvements....
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Clean and simple syntax suitable for beginners

•••
The Lua syntax is modeled from Modula, a language known for being a fantastic introduction to programming. The Lua syntax also has the following key characteristics: Semicolon as a statement separator is optional (mostly used to resolve ambiguous cases as in a = f; (g).x(a)).Syntactic sugar for...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Very easy to integrate with C and C++

•••
One of the best features of Lua is its very well designed C API. This is very useful if you have an existing C library you need to integrate with Lua or quickly get a Lua script running on the C side of the game. Finally Lua plays so nice with C that if you need to optimise for speed you can re-wr...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Helpful community

•••
Due to the growing popularity, Lua has a rather large and helpful community surrounding it.
Endi Sukaj
Ian Masters
Top Pro

There are lots of quality game engines written in Lua

•••
For example Gideros and Defold.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Batteries not included

•••
Lua is so small mainly due to many of the components not being included in the core package. A lot of people need the functionality provided by the Lua module management system LuaRocks and libraries such as Penlight.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Easy to make mistakes when declaring variables

•••
When writing a function, if a programmer forgets to declare a variable, that variable will be declared at global scope. The code will seem to run fine at first, but if another function uses a variable with the same name, but fails to declare it, it will create subtle, incredibly difficult to find b...
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Beeware

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aditya joshi
Top Pro

One codebase. Multiple apps.

•••
BeeWare allows you to write your app in Python and release it on multiple platforms. No need to rewrite the app in multiple programming languages. It means no issues with build tools, environments, compatibility, etc.
aditya joshi
Top Pro

Python makes it easier for beginners to start.

•••
aditya joshi
Top Pro

Open source

•••
gilch
Top Con

Still in alpha

•••
Features are missing and the API is not stable.
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C#

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Incredibly well-engineered language

•••
Where other languages invoke the feeling of being a product of organic growth over time, C# just feels like an incredibly well-designed language where everything has its purpose and almost nothing is non-essential.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Supports some functional features

•••
C# is primarily object-oriented, but it also supports some features typically found in functional languages such as lambdas, delegates and anonymous classes. Methods can be treated like any other object, and the Linq query system operates on monads with lazy evaluation (though it hides this with a...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Complex syntax

•••
Too many syntactic constructs to learn before it becomes usable.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Sandboxing has performance implications

•••
C# relies on .NET functionality to run partially-trusted code. When loading code into a separate app domain, permissions can be specified. However, it results in performance loss due to slow cross-domain calls and can be undesireable in a game. Running code in the same domain can result in a securi...
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Kawa

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Delphi

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Ryan Potts
Top Pro

Single code base to create Windows, iOS, Mac OS and Android app

•••
Ryan Potts
Top Pro

Runtime speed

•••
Monika
Ryan Potts
Top Pro

Able to deliver single executable applications

•••
Ryan Potts
Top Pro

Strongly typed

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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C++

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Huge language supports most everything

•••
C++ is a large language with an even larger community and following. It has libraries for every kind of task that is possible to do with C++.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Module system is not great

•••
C++ uses the #include mechanism provided by C. Which unfortunately is a poor way of accessing the API of a library. Some of the reasons why the module system is weak are: Compile time scalability: The compiler must preprocess every header included in a file, and every header included in those...

Xtend

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gilch
Top Pro

Ruby-like syntactic conveniences

•••
Lambdas are written like Smalltalk's blocks. If it's the last argument, it can go after the parentheses like Ruby's blocks. Parentheses on method calls are optional.
gilch
Top Pro

Type inference

•••
It uses Java's static type system, but you don't have to declare the type of everything all the time, since the Xtend compiler can usually figure it out. This also dramatically cuts down on Java's infamous verbosity.
HardwareHero
Top Pro

Code runs just as fast as Java

•••
Because Xtend relies heavily on JDK and Android classes, it runs just as fast as native Java code.
thermoplastics
gilch
Top Pro

Easy to switch back to Java

•••
Xtend is a low-risk option. Because it compiles to human-readable Java, if you decide you don't like it for your project, you can just switch back to Java without losing your work.
thermoplastics
gilch
Top Pro

Extend even library classes with new methods

•••
This is where it gets its name. You can open classes and add new methods, kind of like Ruby. (Of course this has to be compiled to Java, so really it lives in a kind of helper class.)
thermoplastics
Erik
Top Pro

Succint

•••
Uses functional features ,which are very concise and idiomatic. Plus it has annotations, which cuts down on the Java boilerplate.
gilch
Top Pro

Better defaults than Java

•••
Methods are public if you don't specify, and fields are private. Locals declared with val in Xtend are final in Java. This dramatically cuts down on Java's infamous verbosity.
Erik
Top Con

Difficult to configure in Android Studio

•••
gilch
Top Con

Slower compilation

•••
Unlike most JVM languages, Xtend compiles to Java rather than directly to JVM bytecode. So you have to compile everything four times for Android: from Xtend to Java, from Java to JVM bytecode (.class files), from .class to .dex bytecode, and then AOT compilation from .dex to native ARM upon instal...
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Kivy

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Ruboto

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gilch
Top Pro

Freely mix Java and Ruby in a Ruboto project

•••
Ruby is kind of slow, but you can rewrite the bottlenecks in Java for performance.
gilch
Top Con

App startup takes a few seconds

•••
This is a big deal on mobile.

53 Community Recommendations

gilch
Febrianto Nugroho
rein
Artur Biesiadowski
Fredrik Karlsson
Jean-Sébastien Bélanger Ricard
Dave Jensen
Muhammad Sami
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
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+32
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