Questions related to tech debt (probably) - Any r...

# arrow-contributors

[stojan]

Questions related to tech debt (probably)

- Any reason Arrow is targeting Java7 bytecode? even Android moved to 8 😄
- Any reason Arrow is using compile instead of api/implementation

[gildor]

Android is not moved to 8

[stojan]

it supports the language features, but does not support some APIs on all platforms like: time API or Streams

https://developer.android.com/studio/write/java8-support

[gildor]

It force any user of Arrow to use Desugaring and also target Java 8, which is good, but still have build time penalties

[gildor]

I do not say that it’s bad to force people to migrate to Java 8, just want to say that it’s not free and may be a problem for some projects to adopt Arrow

[stojan]

valid point... and I would say that is a feature....

popular libraries like Retrofit and OkHttp already have those requirements

[gildor]

also it will not give any advantages on practice

[gildor]

Yes, they do, and work as a force to push people to migrate, but those are huge on Android, but personally I wouldn’t migrate my own Kotlin-only library, just because I don’t see any significant advantages and it may be a problem for some projects to adopt it

[stojan]

I would say the adoption would not be a problem for Arrow... the intersection of people doing FP and are using Java7 bytecode is probably 3 people

[gildor]

yes, and how many of them on Android?

[gildor]

also, what would it change for Arrow?

[stojan]

not adding value is a valid point 🙂