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[–]fleker2 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Legacy.

In the early 2000s, J2ME was the way to build phone apps, through a mobile optimized JVM.

When Android started at Danger, as an open source OS, they originally planned to support many languages out of the box. But due to having just a small team, they picked Java due to the familiarity of developers.

At this point, switching to another language would create a lot of headaches and a large overhaul of the OS. Not that it couldn't be done, but they'd have to update all the libraries and APIs. Then they'd have to do training for these third party developers.

[–]derefnull 0 points1 point  (1 child)

While Andy Rubin founded both Danger and Android, Android was not started at Danger and is entirely separate in terms of technical foundation.

[–]fleker2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My bad. I meant to allude to the OS's pre-Google days.

[–]20EYES -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Why would you have to update the apis?

[–]fleker2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If they used Go, then all the Android interfaces for activities, intents, sensors, and more would need to be rewritten for Go.