Indeed. There is a fine line between sharpening the saw and procrastination. What usually clears it up is drive. It would be handy to have a ghost from our grandparents generation at our shoulder when we are about to go off on another whinge about an imperfect world who says "Get on with it!"
That's a fair point, but if your goal is to create something that people will pay for, targeting a popular platform with an infrastructure based around Java, what will having an opinion about Java buy you? Very little. You can like it, or you can not like it, but you'll have to use it anyway, so your time would be better spent thinking about something other than how much you like it or (as is probably more likely...) not.
Were all results of people challenging the status quo of language/platform capability. Developing new languages/frameworks/platforms is NOT unproductive, and has proved very successful in the past.
While java may not be a good excuse to avoid android, it's certainly a good excuse to improve upon the stack (as another commenter suggested, strapping Scala to it would probably be a huge productivity win).
Alas the OP took a pragmatic approach and just built the product. That's fine, but it isn't "better" than someone who (rightly) thinks java is junk and attempts to improve it.
While a fair point, I think expressing your dissatisfaction will let others know there is a market for a better solution. And potentially drive more innovation
... but that could be me post-hoc rationalising my whinging :D
Not really. The jruby guys have made a language very close to ruby that doesn't use any libraries, if you can live with them, there is Scala, also jryby, etc.
There have been quite a few articles before that just cast Android in a more negative light then it deserves.
I develop both iOS and Android apps and this article is the first one I wholeheartedly agree with.
Both platforms are obviously going to have some gloss and some warts, but in the end comparing the two in a zero-sum fashion is like arguing vanilla is better than chocolate.
Skip the ideological critiquing and start shipping some awesome products..
I guess that is really what separates the great developer from the good developer.