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Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

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11–20 of 203 posts

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#11
Apparently Google used it for prototyping the new data bindings library in Android.

https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/3egzq5/so_has_g...

For me the language looks nice as alternative to Java 6 on Android (or 7 when targeting 4.4 onwards), but those break@label, continue@label, .... put me off.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#12
I wrote about Kotlin quite some time ago.[0] I have to say that at the time, I was quite impressed by it all. There were some really good features, it had a much smaller dependency compared to Scala, and so packaging a Kotlin application was a lot easier than say an application in Scala. But to answer your question, there are a few benefits and drawbacks of Kotlin as a language and a platform:

+ World class IDE support.

+ Simple Language, that isn't as complicated as Scala (but this really depends on what features you end up using) but is expressive nonetheless.

+ Really good Java compatibility (if that matters to you that is).

- Language still does not have a 1.0 (although for a few GUI apps I've done, things are pretty stable)

- Language has poor documentation compared to the likes of Java and Scala

- Language has few learning resources (but two people in the Kotlin team are working to change that)

As far as Android development goes, Android Studio is built on top of the IntelliJ platform (which is Jetbrains' product) so I think you'll get really good android development support for Kotlin although I'm a little indifferent to this. I think that at one point go is going to become the defacto language for Android since google likes to keep everything in-house.

[0] http://nafiulis.me/kotlin-koans-i.html

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#13
Always looking for something more simple than (my current) Scala.

- Argued with the developers, they have not clue about Option/Maybe and what it's good for. They offer non-nullable type which solves just one - minor - problem with Null

- No deconstruction

- Their documentation in the beginning mixed features and planned features without discrimination. Spend a lot of time to find out trying to make them work that the features they've described in detail were fantasies.

- With deconstruction I would give it a try in a project.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#14
At JetBrains we're using Kotlin on a few projects now. Some of them are internal, some are public facing. In addition, some of our existing (and new) products are now using Kotlin. IntelliJ IDEA 15 will be shipping with Kotlin plugin enabled by default.

Kotlin is a tool we created out of need. We're using it and we're relying on it, so I'd say it's got a very good long term viability.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#15
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It seems that Kotlin will be officially presented as next language for Android." Source?

Just rumours. I hear that Kotlin will be preinstalled in nearest versions of Android Studio. For google Kotlin can be very good language: it designed to compile to javascript, so you can write code for Android and Web in one language. Also JetBrains developing (not a surprise) Android Studio for Google. JetBrains is most qualified company for building Java-based language.

Are you referring to Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA? We will be shipping Kotlin bundled in IntelliJ IDEA 15. Regarding Android Studio, we don't develop Android Studio for Google. Google does. We develop IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, which is the base on which Android Studio is built.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#16
post #5

It is officially supported by Jetbrains. I don't really see it as a full-fledged language but rather an extension of Java. I'm planning on trying out on my next Android app.

In what sense don't you view it as full-fledged?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#17
post #14

At JetBrains we're using Kotlin on a few projects now. Some of them are internal, some are public facing. In addition, some of our existing (and new) products are now using Kotlin. IntelliJ IDEA 15 will be shipping with Kotlin plugin enabled by default. Kotlin is a tool we created out of need. We're using it and we're relying on it, so I'd say it's got a very good long term viability.

What was the need that Kotlin arose out of?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#18
I have used it for a small amount of production code in a mixed Java / Groovy codebase coded using Intellij and Kotlin version 0.11.

Kotlin worked well - clear concise code, no null worries and no cast worries.

It is peculiarly refreshing to know that my code won't even compile if I try to call a method on null and that Intellij will underline the code in red and suggest a fix.

At the time I was using it I would say the quality of some of the code in the Kotlin API was questionable - specifically the jdbc code. I used the parts that seemed sensible and wrote additional code to provide the functionality I needed. I don't think that code is even in the standard API anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#19
post #3

> I worry about its long term viability given it's low presence on GitHub[1] and It's only on version 0.12.213. Bit premature to judge long term viability imho.

The minor version represents a milestone, currently at 12 and each of these is considerable effort, in terms of decisions and implementation of language features (as well as tooling).

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

#20
post #14

At JetBrains we're using Kotlin on a few projects now. Some of them are internal, some are public facing. In addition, some of our existing (and new) products are now using Kotlin. IntelliJ IDEA 15 will be shipping with Kotlin plugin enabled by default. Kotlin is a tool we created out of need. We're using it and we're relying on it, so I'd say it's got a very good long term viability.

What was the need that Kotlin arose out of?

To summarize, we were looking for a language that could cut down our code base (IntelliJ platform and server side tools are written in Java), be concise but still expressive, toolable, as fast as Java, easy ramp-up time, and very important, interoperable with all the existing code base we had.

Given the candidates at the time, it was decided to start Kotlin.

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