Your Complete Guide to the Kotlin Programming Language

This means that developers who want to use Ruby will ideally need prior experience working in OOP. Google announced Kotlin language as an official language for developing android applications in May 2017. After the announcement, the jobs for Kotlin increased in large numbers; since then, the job opportunities for Kotlin have doubled every three months as per Dice. Google, Netflix, Pinterest are some of the companies using Kotlin. To develop a software or an application, you need to be well-versed with various languages like Java, Python, PHP, etc.

• It’s renowned for its easy code readability, access to well-documented libraries and large user community.
• It’s true, Kotlin can play nice with Java, swapping code like trading cards on the schoolyard, but that’s not the whole story.
• Kotlin is developed by JetBrains, a company behind the IntelliJ Java IDE that Android Studio is based on.
• This is all of a piece with Kotlin’s philosophy of making things explicit rather than relying on defaults.
• Any developer who wants to decrease their startup time can use lazy-loading features in Kotlin.
• Google also crowned Kotlin as the standard IDE for android development.

It is focused on interoperability, safety, clarity, and tooling support. Versions of Kotlin targeting JavaScript ES5.1 and native code (using LLVM) for a number of processors are in production as well. Kotlin is a general-purpose, statically typed programming language developed by Jet Brains. It has both the features of object-oriented programming and functional programming.

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Additionally, according to JetBrains, Kotlin is among the top 3 languages developers are planning to adopt or migrate to. Considering this, many businesses are seeking a skilled mobile app development company that can develop a revenue-driven app and help them gain a competitive advantage. Kotlin can be used both in native and cross-platform app development. Apps made with Kotlin can work on various operating systems, such as Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, or Linux. What’s more, you can also develop web applications (Kotlin Js) in Kotlin. It means you can develop an app for Android and iOS-based solutions using one code.

At the Google I/O 2017 conference, Google announced that Kotlin would be the first officially supported program added to Android Studio. It included a new feature that enabled sharing code between JavaScript platforms and JVM. In 2019, Google announced that Kotlin was the preferred language of Android developers.

Lesser Code Writing

A great feature of extension functions is missing in Java, which is currently available in Kotlin. Kotlin’s built-in null security lets you not write additional code. With the enhancement in technology and increasing demands, it is necessary for the Android app developers working in a corporate company to have hands-on Kotlin as well as Java.

With Java, you need to define a constructor, fields that will store data, getter and setter functions for each field, and so on. Programmers don’t have any problems reviewing and changing code written by other specialists. This is especially important during the implementation of complex projects when the development team grows. Type interface, smart casts, data classes, and properties help to achieve a high level of concision. If you don’t want to write code in two different programming languages, you can compile Kotlin code to JavaScript.

Q1: Is Kotlin easy to learn?

Multiplatform projects are still being tested, and the features and uses may change in the future, but it’s establishing itself as a very promising cross-platform alternative. To learn more about development basics across the board, check out G2’s web development https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ hub or app development hub for ample resources to suit your needs. By including the “data” keyword in the class definition, you can avoid setting up everything manually. The compiler takes on the task and generates all necessary getters and setters automatically.

If you want to make use of optimizations available in newer versions of Java, you can explicitly specify the target Java version from 9 to 20. Note that in this case the resulting bytecode might not run on lower versions. Starting with Kotlin 1.5, the compiler does not support https://www.globalcloudteam.com/how-to-hire-a-kotlin-developer-tips-and-tricks/ producing bytecode compatible with Java versions below 8. In addition, a command line compiler is available, which provides straightforward support for compiling and running applications. Kotlin is easier to understand than Java, which makes code easier to read and comprehend.

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Now let’s take a look at the various platforms on which you write and develop your Kotlin applications. The primary idea behind Kotlin is to make programming languages more compatible with day-to-day app development—mostly on server-side or client-side to advanced Android development. However, Kotlin is versatile, and you can perform any development using it. Up until May 2017, the only officially supported programming languages for Android were Java and C++. Google announced official support for Kotlin on Android at Google I/O 2017, and starting with Android Studio 3.0 Kotlin is built into the Android development toolset. Kotlin can be added to earlier versions of Android Studio with a plug-in.

In Python, programmers can write code faster because they don’t need to specify variable types every time the code runs, which translates into less verbose code. JavaScript is also a dynamically typed language so when we declare a variable we don’t need to specify its type. Python is an object-oriented programming (OOP) language commonly used for web app development, scientific research, machine learning and FinTech.

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It performs well for small ad hoc scripting tasks, as well as front-end and back-end app development. Ruby is actually a blend of various languages, including Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada and Lisp. It provides competitive portability capabilities, and can run on all platforms, including Unix, MacOS and Windows. However, because it is an interpretive language, the conversion from source code to bytecode can create lag for compile times, system calls and kernel requests. And even though it runs on every major OS and domain, it is not the best choice for mobile apps right out of the box. Keep in mind, though, it is possible to find tool and library updates that can improve its mobile capabilities.

Google’s support gave life to Kotlin when it declared Kotlin to be the officially supported language for Android at its I/O annual summit 2017. With Google’s announcement, many prior fears, such as bugs, unsupported formats, and others, were laid to rest, and developers can now freely develop apps using Kotlin. Once more, this feature makes Kotlin a more time-efficient programming language as compared to Java, which requires a lot of manual coding to be performed. For many years, Java was the one and only programming language for Android and server-side development. However, with the rise of Kotlin, its dominant position has changed.

Companies Using the Kotlin Language

Also, Kotlin has been announced as the official language for Android app development. But definitely, Java has a position that is hard to compete with. Kotlin also adds some needed features that Java does not support.