Looking back, the year 2014 when in your World Wide Developer Conference Apple presented us with a new programming language intended to replace Objective C, a language that would make the work much easier for developers and applications much more fluid and optimized for users, and if Apple creating its own hardware and its own operating system seemed little to you, also creating its programming language would gives such extensive control over your products that it could bring us a very substantial improvement in overall optimization and user experience.
Swift was featured as a simple and revolutionary language, a language that would mark the future of development in many aspects, and it is that little by little (as is normal, in a newly created language) new possibilities are added and Apple is implementing this language in its native applications, both in iOS, OS X, as in the rest of their systems, but Apple's plans were not limited there, they knew that if Swift were put the lock of exclusivity, it would not have the success that they expected.
And for that reason Swift was released in an "Open Source" way. or Open Source, this means that anyone can experiment with it without having to pay for rights or anything like that, it is free to use, for the community.
A destination for expansion
If Apple launched Swift exclusively for their systems, the developers would refuse (for the most part) to learn a language for a single company, and therefore they decided to let the bird free, give it wings and fly, perhaps that is why they chose that logo ...
The important thing is that being open source, any other company can make use of it and implement it in their system if they wish, and that is precisely what Google is considering implementing Swift on Android.
Lifting anchor
Google and Java have a long history behind them, Java has always been the heart of Android, these two names have always gone hand in hand, in the good and the bad, and it is precisely the bad that can now make Java a liability for Android, since if that were not enough with the poor performance that it causes to Android having to virtualize to run Java, Oracle (company that acquired Sun Microsystems, original owner of Java) has wanted its piece of the pie and has stabbed Google demanding a large amount of money (9.300 billion USD) for making use of APIs. Java without your permission.
Nail after nail is causing Google to start looking for alternatives, other development paths for Android that allow improving the performance of this system without breaking its Open Source philosophy, and it seems that Google is talking to Facebook and UBER about the possibility of including Swift in its mobile operating system.
A free bird
Swift isn't the only language Google is considering, Kotlin is the name of another alternative As Google contemplates, Kotlin would be much easier to integrate into Android than Swift due to the existing similarities and compatibility, however the latter would cause problems for developers since it is very slow to compile.
Thus, Google has a "difficult" decision, or think about yourself and proceed to integrate Kotlin into Android, or think about the developers, and sacrificing much more time and work on your part (since to introduce Swift in Android you will have to modify and redo many aspects of the system and even the own bases) makes the task of developing for Android much easier.
But the advantages of Swift on Android can be much more succulent than they seem at first glance, and that is to include Swift, Google would get Android and iOS closer together Without having to change the philosophy of either of them, Google could develop Swift to its own whim without depending on Apple and include Android's own functions, but the use of Swift could allow developers to create applications for both systems with a common base , which would reduce the number of exclusive apps for one system or another, and would greatly reduce the time and difficulty to create 2 versions of the same application, oriented to different systems.
Integrating Swift into Android could also get you Google an opportunity on a platter, and there are many developers who could port their applications from iOS to Android optimizing them correctly for said system and providing a user experience very on par, causing Android and iOS to fight each other solely for their benefits as an operating system , and forgetting once and for all the number of applications available in one or the other, the ease of development for one system or another, the fluidity of the applications in each of them and many other problems that the use of Java hurts. Android.
Slow transition
No one would blame Google for making use of a language created by Apple, I personally see it more praiseworthy than reprehensible, and is that if you have an opportunity to offer a better product or a better experience to your users, the reprehensible thing would be not to take advantage of it, and by doing also you can take advantage of your rival to improve your own product without paying a single penny.
This is something that Apple could do well too, the more Swift is used and the more popular it becomes, the more people will work on it and the higher quality will be contributed to this new language, something that can lead to better applications for iOS and OS X.
However the transition from Java to Swift (to get done) it will not be immediate, nor fast, Google does not plan to replace Java, at least in the short term, but it would allow the use of both languages in its system, giving more options to developers, something that if successful with Swift could end in a complete transition, but this remains far, especially since Swift is such a recent language and Google has so much work ahead of us ...
Still with everything this is very good news for everyoneEverything that means more applications, a better user experience and fewer problems, is something that is fabulous for users, and even better for developers, who would see their work simplified, something that would give access to many more people with new ideas. to this type of work, especially being Swift a language designed to be simple to use.
All said, we can only wait to see what movement Google makes, whether or not it receives pressure from other sides and how these movements affect its final products or Apple, while we wait, Would you like to see this scenario come true?
With the fragmentation that exists in Android, Google cannot play that, having thought about it before Mr. Google
That seems perfect to me. Android should get rid of the Java virtual machine and work directly on the real hardware if we want the operating system and apps to really harness the power of today's phones and tablets. And Google should not only offer one language, but more than one programming language, as is the case with computers that there are for all tastes and needs.
And of course it should be possible to program for Android ON Android. What is this about having a decacore tablet, with 4GB of RAM and storage for a tube ... and having to go to a common PC to program something? You have to get these two things, and you have to get them now or in addition to fragmentation, Android will be a stagnant system.
Actually the author of the article should have documented better about many things. There are things that do not keep even the minimum of relationship. The performance problems that existed in Android were due to the little hardware of those then and that in turn to the fact that the operating system allowed what the IOS one did not. Currently IOS introduced real multitasking, and Voila !! We see Apple devices with. Virtual machines are, in fact, a technique to achieve execution even superior to that of compiled languages, that of performance is not related. Virtual machines, like the one from .Net (from Microsoft, where Xbox games run) have even lower performance than the Java virtual machine. Today's virtual machines have a run-time compiler, called JIT. That compile the bytecode to binary the first time it is executed, but before said compilation, the bytecode is optimized programmer's code, and in turn it is optimized again when it is compiled by the JIT. You must document your best for the next one.
Something else, certainly Google wants to avoid legal issues, that is not related to adopting Kotlin, since Kotlin is still mounted on Java. I have been using it for a while now (since I was a beta), it is Java on steroids, it could be said that it is the version of Swift that runs in java, they are very similar in terms of syntax, the compilation time is excellent, not as fast as Java, but not a relevant reason as mentioned. Another detail is that Kotlin is already used a lot in the Android world, there is no news regarding its use. What Google should do is offer frameworks with better architecture patterns, and make things more comfortable like Android Annotations do or like butter knife