That usual Kotlin narrative keeps forgetting that Android Studio, Gradle, and Kotlin itself are built and depend on, Java based technologies, and there is no Kotlin without Java ecosystem, unless JetBrains ends up releasing a Kotlin Virtual Machine, and rewriting all the Android development stack on top of it.
Additionally, to prove this point even further, as the Java ecosystem keeps moving along happily, despite the anti-Java jabs typical among Android developers playing with Kotlin, ungrateful for its origins, the Android team was obligied to make ART upgradable via Play Store, and update its Java language support all the way up to Java 17 LTS, so that Android developers could still make use of Java libraries on Maven Central, that have moved beyond Java 8.
You should also have a look at Jake Wharton interviews regarding on how the Android team looked up on Flutter, Compose was pratically started as counter movent from the team, there might even still exist on Twitter some of his comments on the subject.
Additionally, to prove this point even further, as the Java ecosystem keeps moving along happily, despite the anti-Java jabs typical among Android developers playing with Kotlin, ungrateful for its origins, the Android team was obligied to make ART upgradable via Play Store, and update its Java language support all the way up to Java 17 LTS, so that Android developers could still make use of Java libraries on Maven Central, that have moved beyond Java 8.
You should also have a look at Jake Wharton interviews regarding on how the Android team looked up on Flutter, Compose was pratically started as counter movent from the team, there might even still exist on Twitter some of his comments on the subject.