In future, will the Android team continue to creat...

# compose

[adjpd]

In future, will the Android team continue to create new Android views and then the Jetpack Compose team mimics them, a la TextInputLayout and TextField? Moreover, is there a plan to make Jetpack Compose the primary view system for Android, or just an alternative?

[Mark Murphy]

Google generally does not talk about future plans like this.

Also, bear in mind that Compose UI layers atop of the View system -- in the end, Compose UI is a very very very very complex custom View.

And note that not everything can be done in Compose UI. Creating composable analogues for the Material Components for Android is relatively straightforward. But some things can only be done via framework View implementations -- you cannot create a composable replacement for SurfaceView, for example.

[adjpd]

I'm wondering how much Google with promote Jetpack Compose as the primary way to make android UI. At the moment it's the forth tab along to get to Jetpack and then the fifth tab along to get to Compose. I wouldn't say it's the mainstay of Android development currently. WIl Google, in time, push it further to the front?

[Mark Murphy]

My guess is that it will.

My mental model for this is how they approached Kotlin, which went through a series of steps, something like:

• "Would you like another programming language?"
• "OK, we added support for Kotlin"
• "We are now 'Kotlin first'"
Compose is around that second bullet now. "Compose first" might come next year. However, even with "Kotlin first", there is still reasonable official Java support, and a few spots are still lacking Kotlin examples. It is likely that official Compose support will have a similar scope in a "Compose first" world.