Kotlin: The Future of Android Development

Bixlabs
Bixlabs
Published in
3 min readAug 14, 2019

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Everyone is talking about Kotlin nowadays. Many Android developers are already working with this tech as well. Even though Java is still the popular tech at this party, Kotlin is officially supported by Google for Android development, so this new tech is coming strong into the developing world.

Like all new technologies, it makes us wonder, what are the primary benefits of Kotlin that make it the favorite language of app developers? Read further to find out!

Java Interoperability

Java has been the top preference for app development for long now. It wouldn’t be wrong if I say that Java dominates the application development industry at this specific moment in history. As it’s not feasible for developers to ignore Java, many professionals are apprehensive of switching over to another language, especially when most of a project is already written with the popular one.

That’s why Kotlin is winning territory: because by using Kotlin doesn’t mean you must replace Java: the new code can easily be called from Java, and vice-versa. On similar grounds, you can use Java code while making a Kotlin based app, as those two languages are interoperable.

No More Null Pointer Exceptions

Ask any app developer and they will tell you his horror stories about NullPointerExceptions. NPEs have been hunting developers for decades now. Actually, the factor why most well-developed apps crash are NPEs and, for long there hasn’t been any solution to this.

Kotlin, on the other hand, offers new options as it supports nullability within itself; it has @Nullable and @NonNull in the type system to avoid Null Pointer Exceptions. So, while working with Kotlin, NPE can be caught at compilation and, therefore, there is no run time app crash.

Supported by Leading IDEs

Most of the time, developers refuse to change to new programming languages because that requires to change everything (entire projects, plans, estimates, and even the integrated development environment). On top of that, if no good IDEs are available for the language, developers have to go through significant hassles.

Kotlin comes with an advantage: the most popular IDEs support it, so developers don’t need to go through the switch and can continue to use their favorite IDE.

If you are comfortable with the existing Java frameworks and libraries, you can still derive the benefits of Kotlin coding.

Less Code

App development trends have changed over the years. But, one thing that hasn’t changed about app development is the concept that the lesser the code, the easier it is to maintain, read, and scale the app. Kotlin requires developers to write less code, which makes the code cleaner and easier to read, maintain, and test.

The code readability with Kotlin is excellent. So, when a language gives a clean and readable code, how can developers ignore it?

Conclusion

Kotlin is a new language, it doesn’t count with as many experienced and proficiency developers using it as Java does, so it would be biased to say that there are no challenges in app development when using Kotlin.

That might change in the next few years, as developers are keen to try and experiment with the opportunities this language brings. Kotlin is the emerging trend for Android app development. It can be used to build efficient code. So, make your app development productive by using Kotlin.

Do share, if you have any experiences, or apprehensions related to Kotlin.

Are you looking for Android app developers? Contact the expert for your next project using Kotlin now.

Author Bio

Jin Markov is a Content Writer with GoodFirms, a research firm in the USA. He has 6 years of experience writing on app development and cutting-edge technology.

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Bixlabs
Bixlabs

We leverage Latin American talent and latest technologies to build mobile and web applications with purpose. Let's build better apps, together.