November 12th, 2007
Google taps Java VM for Android gPhone SDK
As promised, Google released the Android SDK for gPhone-like devices today. Programmers can use it to immediately begin development of native programs that will run on Open Handset Alliance hardware. In a surprise move, however, the native programming interface is Java.
This is great news for developers because we won’t have to worry about recompiling the programs for different architectures, for example one version for ARM and another for x86. It’s also good for manufacturers because it gives them tremendous flexibility in the hardware they can put in their phones. They can drop in new types of processors without having to worry about breaking existing applications. Last week I predicted they settle for C as the native language, but I’m glad I was wrong.
Google also provided an Eclipse plug-in for Android developers. Expect Sun to provide a plug-in for NetBeans soon. In addition they announced a $10 million contest to jumpstart the development of Android applications. I’m downloading the Android SDK now and will have more to say on it later.
Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.
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| 11/12/07
