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Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

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11–20 of 99 posts

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#11
It seems to me that a lot of people seem to think prefering Kotlin signifies a move away from Java. But I simply don't understand how using a JVM language signifies a move away from Java. After all, it all gets compiled into the same bytecode, and Kotlin heavily depends on the Java ecosystem.

If Oracle is 'poisoning Java', Kotlin's not the answer. Surely, it'd be a language totally independent of Oracle, wouldn't it?

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean by templates, but you can still use Rx, streams and java.time.* in Kotlin. It's pretty much just a nicer Java.

Kotlin has its own (much better IMO) alternative to streams: Sequence. I see absolutely no reason to use streams in Kotlin.

The Java 8 streams library can auto parallelize things. That's the main reason it was created in fact!

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#13
post #9

...great, Kotlin for Android, Dart for Flutter, on the ML side they're starting to adopt Swift, for networking infra code Go. What the heck is with this "tower of babel"?! Are other people not bothered by the overlapping features of all these languages? At this point I thin most would prefer a slightly-frankensteinian monster-language that you'd get by taking either Kotlin or Swift and bolting all the other features…

> ...great, Kotlin for Android, Dart for Flutter, on the ML side they're starting to adopt Swift, for networking infra code Go.

Don't forget HTML+JS+CSS for websites and PWAs. And given that web technologies work across all platforms, perhaps that's the area for developers to keep focusing on.

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean by templates, but you can still use Rx, streams and java.time.* in Kotlin. It's pretty much just a nicer Java.

Kotlin has its own (much better IMO) alternative to streams: Sequence. I see absolutely no reason to use streams in Kotlin.

One simple reason: you already know streams and don't have time to learn sequence.

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#15
post #9

...great, Kotlin for Android, Dart for Flutter, on the ML side they're starting to adopt Swift, for networking infra code Go. What the heck is with this "tower of babel"?! Are other people not bothered by the overlapping features of all these languages? At this point I thin most would prefer a slightly-frankensteinian monster-language that you'd get by taking either Kotlin or Swift and bolting all the other features…

I kind of get your point.

But I have to say after spending a fair amount of time writing C, C++, and Java, I found go quite refreshing. The simplicity of syntax, design, and implementation of go does reward using it for what it's good at.

So simple in fact that I'd happily pick up another simple language or two for things that Go is not good at.

I'd much rather have a few somewhat narrow language like go, instead of the ugly mess that is C++. Can anyone normal serious C++ programmer understand all of C++?

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#16

It seems to me that a lot of people seem to think prefering Kotlin signifies a move away from Java. But I simply don't understand how using a JVM language signifies a move away from Java. After all, it all gets compiled into the same bytecode, and Kotlin heavily depends on the Java ecosystem. If Oracle is 'poisoning Java', Kotlin's not the answer. Surely, it'd be a language totally independent of Oracle, wouldn't it?

I bet they have plans to make a different VM for Kotlin and move away from JVM, should be coming in the next couple of years.

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#17
post #7

Good that they cleared that out. Lets see what is the roadmap to use Java 9+ libraries in Android, or if they are supposed to be all rewritten in Kotlin. Secondly, will they also replace NDK with Kotlin/Native? Given that several APIs are NDK only, and naturally should be accessible to the prefered language as well, without manual boilerplate.

I don't think they should be rewritten in Kotlin. That would force everyone to use Kotlin with minimal benefits for Kotlin users.

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#18
post #9

...great, Kotlin for Android, Dart for Flutter, on the ML side they're starting to adopt Swift, for networking infra code Go. What the heck is with this "tower of babel"?! Are other people not bothered by the overlapping features of all these languages? At this point I thin most would prefer a slightly-frankensteinian monster-language that you'd get by taking either Kotlin or Swift and bolting all the other features…

> "tower of babel"

The hallmark of a fragmented corporation, with internal competition between divisions.

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#19

It seems to me that a lot of people seem to think prefering Kotlin signifies a move away from Java. But I simply don't understand how using a JVM language signifies a move away from Java. After all, it all gets compiled into the same bytecode, and Kotlin heavily depends on the Java ecosystem. If Oracle is 'poisoning Java', Kotlin's not the answer. Surely, it'd be a language totally independent of Oracle, wouldn't it?

I bet they have plans to make a different VM for Kotlin and move away from JVM, should be coming in the next couple of years.

Why bother? Being on the JVM has many advantages and building some new VM (and compiler?) would be extra hassle and expense for not much gain.

Re: Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development

#20
post #9

...great, Kotlin for Android, Dart for Flutter, on the ML side they're starting to adopt Swift, for networking infra code Go. What the heck is with this "tower of babel"?! Are other people not bothered by the overlapping features of all these languages? At this point I thin most would prefer a slightly-frankensteinian monster-language that you'd get by taking either Kotlin or Swift and bolting all the other features…

thinking about nim(rod) I'm quite happy that there are still ppl trying out stuff.
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