Getting started programming in dynamic languages in Android ((J)Ruby, Clojure...)

Question

I've been looking around, and I can't seem to find any definitive answer or headway that seems "up to date". I've seen some interesting projects like Mirah (formerly Duby), and am looking into it a bit. I've seen JRuby unsuccessfully used to compile ruby into .dex. I've also been looking, independently, into Clojure and have realized that they might all be linked to the same thing.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get started and make headway? I ask not only what frameworks could help, but more importantly, a philosophy/direction in which to guide my efforts, just to get started.

Answer 1

See this question. Have you considered Scala? I know its not a dynamic language, but it seems to be the best alternative to Java right now.

Answer 2

JRuby (its Android distribution is called Ruboto, you can try out Ruboto IRB now) works in interpreted mode on Android, and though dx has some problems in compiling all of the JRuby standard library, the JRuby devs seem to want to solve that problem on their end, so I'd keep an eye on JRuby, becasue the issues are likely to be solved soonish.

It also looks like it's possible for dx to compile just the portion of the standard library that you're interested in using for a given app.

Answer 3

Most of the Dynamic JVM languages like JRuby, Clojure, or Jython have severe performance problems on the Android Dalvik JVM. Until Dalvik gets friendlier to dynamic languages you are pretty much out of luck.