What Amazed Me About Learning Kotlin and Android Development
As I mentioned in the previous article about Core Engineering Bootcamp, at this moment I have been joining the Mobile Development module as part of GoTo Engineering Bootcamp. In this story, I would like to share my experience on the first day of the Mobile Development module. I learned about Kotlin and the basics of Android Development.
Kotlin: The Next Evolution of Java
Coming from a Java background, transitioning to Kotlin felt like moving into a more elegant world of programming. It’s totally interoperable with Java, meaning able to call Java code from Kotlin and vice versa. This compatibility guarantees that existing Java codebases can be continuously migrated to Kotlin.
What amazed me most about Kotlin was how it improved upon Java’s verbosity. The syntax is more concise and features like data classes make the code shorter. For instance, consider this simple Java getter and setter:
public class Student {
private String nim;
public String getNim() {
return nim;
}
public void setNim(String nim) {
this.nim = nim;
}
}In Kotlin, the same can be achieved in just one line:
data class Student(var nim: String)Kotlin Koans
One of the most delightful resources I’ve found while learning Kotlin is the Kotlin Koans. These are a series of interactive programming exercises that help us learn Kotlin step by step. What I love about the Kotlin Koans is that they are hands-on and practical. Each exercise presents a problem, and we write code to solve it. It’s a great way to get familiar with Kotlin.
The Koans cover a wide range of topics, from basic syntax and null safety to more advanced features like collections. The immediate feedback when we got syntax errors or failing answers and the gradual increase in difficulty make it a highly effective learning tool. It felt like having a personal tutor guiding me through the learning of the language.
Android Studio: A Feature-Rich IDE
When developing Android applications, most of the developers will use Android Studio as the IDE. Android Studio is a powerful IDE for Android development. The features and tools available to developers are mind-blowing. Here are a few that amazed me.
Layout Editor
Layout Editor really helps while designing user interfaces. The drag-and-drop interface allows us to build complex layouts visually, and the real-time preview shows how the UI will look on different devices and screen sizes.
Logcat
Debugging is a fundamental part of development, and Logcat in Android Studio makes this handle much more sensible. Logcat shows system messages, including stack traces when our app throws an error, and logs from our app. This real-time logging is truly supportive for following down issues, understanding app behavior, and guaranteeing everything run fine.
Android Virtual Device (AVD) Manager
Testing apps on diverse devices can be challenging, but the AVD Manager makes it simpler. Able to make and oversee numerous virtual devices with distinctive configurations, guaranteeing our app works consistently over different screen sizes and Android versions.
Conclusion
Learning Kotlin and Android Studio has been an exciting journey. Kotlin’s conciseness makes it a delight to work with, whereas the Kotlin Koans give an excellent path to learn. Android Studio, with its wealthy set of features, enables developers to make high-quality apps productively.