Jack and Android or Tale of Earth and Sky

Hello dear readers. Today we’ll talk about a topic like Java 8 and Android. On the pros and cons, and other interesting topics.

It has been quite a while since the release of Java 8, and on the android it appeared not so long ago. Once this story was repeated with the transition to Java 7. And here we are again in the same place.

And after dancing with a tambourine , you finally connected Java 8 to your project.

Pros of Java 8

The main plus is, you will not believe, Java 8. New features are really useful, and pretty cool. These are the same lambda expressions, and references to methods, and other cool things about which you can write all day, and now about the bad.

Cons of Java 8

Java 8 has one big minus - Jack. In order to connect a new Java to the project, you need to spend some time, and with Jack android development turns into hell.

My colorful experience

Once I decided to try what kind of animal. I added Java 8 to my project, and I was truly glad that I did it, although I had to tinker. Java 8 did not want to be friends with Dagger. But after the sacrifice to pagan deities seeking an answer to stack overflow and other venerable places - the result was a completely working appendix. Everything looked cool. And I decided for myself once and for all: Java 7 - for good, long live Java 8.

Less rosy continuation

I decided to do my next project using Java 8, which I later regretted. Unlike the previous project, this had to be done quickly and not waste time swinging. Nothing foreshadowed the trouble, until after the next build the attachment crashed. It was a good old one NullPointerException. That is still an unexpected person. It worked when I ate to change the text in TextView. That means TextView == null. But how? MakeButterKnife.bind(this);I have not forgotten, so what's the matter? And why did it crash right now, because before everything was ok, and I did not change anything? I decided to rebuild - everything is ok again. I think: okay, that it was sorted out somehow later. Again, something changed, again build, and again NullPointerException. The only reasonable explanation was that for some good reason butterKnife didn't do a damn thing. After several rebuilds, everything returned to normal, then crashed again, and after the next sacrifice of the search in different forums, the answer was found: it’s not only me that kind of garbage, and the notorious Jack is to blame for it ( Even Jake Wharton himself spoke warmly about him ). There was no time to understand, and I returned to the good old Java 7.

And as it turned out, problems with Jack were not only with ButterKnife. Since then, I continue to work on Java 7, because I think Jack is too unstable. It feels like playing roulette. So the rainbow light turned into a gray sadness :(