> Yep, it is easier to make languages target DEX than suffer the pain of the NDK.
Why do you say that? Plenty of Android apps use non-trivial amounts of C/C++ code, and Dropbox has a tool called Djinni that can automatically generate JNI glue code. My guess is that if it's feasible to use pure Dex bytecode, then debugging is easier (because there's only one kind of call stack), memory can be managed more effectively (because the Dalvik/ART garbage collector can manage everything), and performance isn't impacted by the overhead of JNI. But I have nothing to back that up.
Why do you say that? Plenty of Android apps use non-trivial amounts of C/C++ code, and Dropbox has a tool called Djinni that can automatically generate JNI glue code. My guess is that if it's feasible to use pure Dex bytecode, then debugging is easier (because there's only one kind of call stack), memory can be managed more effectively (because the Dalvik/ART garbage collector can manage everything), and performance isn't impacted by the overhead of JNI. But I have nothing to back that up.