What you should know about Kotlin language

A new programming language in the second decade of 21st century?!

Yep, that’s right — a fresh brand new one. Kotlin is a statically typed byte code language that is compatible with Java Virtual Machine and will run wherever Java can run.

It’s open sourced, fully supported in Android Studio 3.0 and up. Google announced at Google I/O 2017 its first class support on Android system.

This language is a baby or “crazy Russian programmers”, the St. Petersburg office of the JetBrains studio, authors of such popular IntelliJ IDEA IDE (get the anthology?) and Google official branch of it Android Studio.

Why should I care, you ask? Well, here Mike Hearn explains a few points, including the most interesting one for me, the compilation into JavaScript source code.

Is it easy to switch and no issues? Not exactly, there are a few bumps described here: https://novemberfive.co/blog/kotlin-implementation-challenges/ At the same time, the author points that “Kotlin makes it possible to do far more than we were able to with Java, including solving problems Java simply couldn’t solve.”

And, by the way, it’s quite similar to Swift on Apple’s iOS as compared here: http://nilhcem.com/swift-is-like-kotlin/ It may not mean too much at the current state of technologies, but a great step toward crossing the chasm between the two platforms.

Interested? Start here: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/tutorials/koans.html