I imagine the devs and management don't care much as they're going to migrate to ART soon, which I imagine does not have Dalvik's circa 2003 design decisions. Google hasn't been investing in Dalvik because its days are numbered.
edit: why is this being downvoted? Do we really think ART will have these limitations? Android has been hot to get off Dalvik for many reasons and they're finally doing it in L. This is very good news and makes Andy Rubin-era Android decisions, which made sense for a 2003 phone, replaced with more modern thinking.
edit2: Apparantly, I'm wrong. Looks like the 16 bit limitation in still there in the current version of ART. Maybe this will change in the final production version.
Basically they're aware it's an issue and they're working on it both for the future of the platform but also in a backwards compatible way (using multi-dex and reflection).
edit: why is this being downvoted? Do we really think ART will have these limitations? Android has been hot to get off Dalvik for many reasons and they're finally doing it in L. This is very good news and makes Andy Rubin-era Android decisions, which made sense for a 2003 phone, replaced with more modern thinking.
edit2: Apparantly, I'm wrong. Looks like the 16 bit limitation in still there in the current version of ART. Maybe this will change in the final production version.