BAbad_user·Jul 28, 2017
Google is bringing Java 8 support, and from what I understood from one of their engineers, they are working on supporting invokeDynamic as well, so we might get the whole package: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/03/future-of-...
Scala 2.12 has moved to Java 8 indeed, however this means modern features that are used for encoding Scala: invokeDynamic and default interface methods.
These should make Scala compiled code faster and more stable in regards to backwards compatibility. Both Java 6 and 7 have need EOLed. We cannot stand still because of Android's shitty support.
Google has effectively fractured the ecosystem, pulling off what Microsoft couldn't do with J#, and they got away with it. I actually think that they preferred to announce Kotlin as being a first class citizen as a marketing trick in order to offset the lack
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of support for Java 8.
Even so, Scala does in fact have great Android support:
1. Scala 2.11 will remain supported for some time, language-level features have already been backported from 2.12 and Typelevel.org also has a commitment to support it even further
2. We have great integration with the tool chain, see https://github.com/scala-android/sbt-android
3. For a pretty cool open source project made with Scala, that uses functional programming libraries like Cats and Monix, see: http://www.9cards.io
So if you think about it, given all the other tooling available, compared with other languages Scala actually has stellar support, along with actual projects ;-)