
Ask HN: Why Apple and Google impose the languages used to build apps? - ahmedfromtunis
I understand that this could&#x27;ve been relevant few years ago, when smartphones used to be inadequate for the task.<p>But this is no longer a thing.<p>So why would Google and Apple hand-selected for us a couple of languages each for building apps on their platforms?
======
Eridrus
I don't know about Apple, but Google doesn't force you to use a specific
language, they just only support a handful. And at some level your language
has to be able to interop with the OS.

Even before Google announced Kotlin, people were already using it or Scala to
build apps.

React Native is another example of an unsanctioned effort to write apps in
JavaScript.

So I don't think your premise is true: neither Apple nor Google impose a
language, they just only support a small set of languages officially.

------
tinus_hn
Unlike open source where you have a hundred choices that are unsupported (most
of them abandoned), they have a few choices that are supported and work
reasonably well.

Also people tend to whine about objective-C and Swift but these languages
enable you to easily build things that are almost impossible to build in most
other languages.

------
moocowtruck
because companies that size enjoy putting developers through massive amounts
of pain for fun :(

