Android Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19. All the World’s Not Java: Other Programming Languages and Frameworks

Developing new programming languages is a constant process in this industry. Several new (or not-so-new) languages have become popular recently. These include JVM languages like Groovy, Kotlin, Clojure, Scala as well as non-JVM languages such as Scheme, Erlang, C#, F#, Haskell, and more. Android encourages the use of many languages. You can write your app in pure Java using the SDK, of course—that’s the subject of most of the rest of this book. You can also mix some C/C++ code into Java using Android’s NDK for native code (see Recipe 19.3). People have made most of the major compiled languages work, especially (but not exclusively) the JVM-based ones. You can write using a variety of scripting languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby (see Recipe 19.4). And there’s more…

If you want a very high-level, drag-and-drop development process, look at Android App Inventor, a Google-originated environment for building applications easily using the drag-and-drop metaphor and “blocks” that snap together. App Inventor is now maintained at MIT.

If you are a web developer used to working your magic in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, there is a route for you to become an Android developer using the tools you already know. There are, in fact, five or six technologies that go this route, including AppCelerator Titanium, PhoneGap/Cordova (see Recipe 19.10), and more. These generally use CSS to build a style ...