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

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

#31

Post by ForHackernews »

PunchTornado wrote: post #27
ForHackernews wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

moving away from oracle is `not much gain`?

There's already at least two big-name alternatives to Oracle Java: The OpenJDK and Amazon's Corretto. If you're suggesting Google might make their own "supported" OpenJDK build, then sure, that might be worth something. That's different than moving away from JVM entirely to a different compiler target, as suggested by the parent comment.

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

#32

Post by PunksATawnyFill »

nnq wrote: 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…

Yep. Swift is open-source and pretty decent. Google should clean house and go with the language that would attract the most developers.

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

#33

Post by pjmlp »

nnq wrote: 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…

Programming languages are products.

Once upon a time, the OS of choice would dictate which languages were tier 1.

Nowadays the platform has taken up that role.

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

#34

Post by pjmlp »

BossingAround wrote: post #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?

Kotlin on Android ultimately runs on Google's ART, not a JVM implementation, think MS J++.

Also JetBrains is betting on moving Kotlin beyond the JVM, to all platforms it can reach.

The latest version of kotlinc is now built with Kotlin/Native.

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

#35

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

pjmlp wrote: post #34
BossingAround wrote: post #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?

Kotlin on Android ultimately runs on Google's ART, not a JVM implementation, think MS J++. Also JetBrains is betting on moving Kotlin beyond the JVM, to all platforms it can reach. The latest version of kotlinc is now built with Kotlin/Native.

Which one reason if I'd chose a JVM language I'd go with Kotlin and no longer Scala. The JetBrains people understand and care deeply about developers. Scala compilation of my current project takes ages with the newest Scala/SBT on an iMac Pro 16 core / 32 gb.

I have a side project in Go, compilation, startup and execution is so fast that you don't think it's compiling at all.

I wish language designers would use a fast language for the designer and not the 'see we can bootstrap our own language' approach. Kotlin/Native is at least a good compromise.

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

#37

Post by curt15 »

liopleurodon wrote: post #28
ForHackernews wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oracle v Google

Android has been using OpenJDK for a while with no problems.

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

#38

Post by scns »

pjmlp wrote: post #6
tracer4201 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen that article you linked to before. Is the solution to working around Oracle not OpenJDK? I’m not completely informed on the topic. Would appreciate some more context.

Usually FUD against Oracle, that always ignores that Oracle is also the major company behind OpenJDK. Until there are other companies actually implementing JEPs into OpenJDK in the same volume as Oracle, OpenJDK == Oracle.

Didn't Red Hat take over recently?

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

#39

Post by sonnyblarney »

BossingAround wrote: post #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?

"If Oracle is 'poisoning Java', Kotlin's not the answer."

It's not Java, and at the same time it is.

It's 'far enough away' to protect them legally, but close enough to leverage the ecosystem.

Without that, it'd be very hard to attract new devs, Also, Android uses a kind of JVM, they've invested a lot.

Oracle can only poison Java they'll have a harder time poisoning the JVM etc. - there's just too much dependent there.

If Oracle goes nuclear with Java, Google has the wherewithal to fork their own version of the JVM.

It the right move, pragmatically.

Remember, Java is a very useful thing and especially the JVM.

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

#40

Post by sonnyblarney »

threeseed wrote: post #8
maga_2020 wrote: post #2

I feel good and bad about this. I invested several years at coming up to speed with Java 8+ (using templates, rx, streams, the new time APIs). It was not hard, but difficult to unlearn some C++ idioms around templates, consts, reference model and object lifecycle management. Clearly this driven by Oracle's continuous poisoning of Java ecosystem (eg https://headcrashing.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/negotiations-f... ) And…

If Oracle was really intent on poisoning Java then they would've stopped investing in it and fired all of the core engineers. But they didn't. And have in fact continued to invest in the ecosystem e.g. GraalVM, OpenJDK.

'Poisoning' is not 'getting rid of'.

'Poisoning' is taking full control and monetizing everything, making everything closed source.

GraalVM is in their eyes, going to be a money-making investment. The only extent to which it might be partly OSS is a function of how much they really had to give away.

Oracle's objective with Java is to take a huge bite out of the Enterprise and do with Java what they did with their DB.

Imagine if we all needed to talk to an Oracle sales person to make our app :)

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