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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

#51

Post by bad_user »

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. Surely, it'd be a language totally independent of Oracle, wouldn't it?"

No, the answer lies in companies that want to invest in OpenJDK, like Red Hat / IBM, to take away the stewardship of Java from Oracle and for us to move to distributions maintained by the community and not by Oracle. See: https://adoptopenjdk.net/

OpenJDK being GPLv2, the genie can't be put back in the bottle. This situation is precisely what Open Source is for: the ability to fork if you're not happy with the maintainers. Without that ability you're not talking about open source.

Also languages like Kotlin and Scala are a step in the right direction, because it means that the ecosystem is not dependent on Oracle for language improvements.

But yes, I agree with the sentiment. Kotlin isn't a breakup with Java, only a breakup with Oracle.

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

#52

Post by mruts »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #35
pjmlp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fas…

Hopefully dotty solves some of those problems.

Compared to Scala, I personally find Kotlin inexpressive and ugly.

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

#54

Post by snowAbstraction »

IshKebab wrote: post #44
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…

The languages are quite different though and there are good reasons for using different ones in different places: 1. Kotlin is basically modern Java, and is therefore an obvious choice for Android which still runs everything in a JVM. 2. Go was basically designed to run network services and it is very good at it. The standard library is excellent (probably the best of any language) and concurrency is pretty easy too.…

To what extend, is Swift being used for ML or DL by Google or others? Is it a new TensorFlow core? Or just just another binding?

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

#55

Post by thsealienbstrds »

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…

After experiencing Android development with Kotlin, I will choose Kotlin again by default. Admittedly, my experience with the most recent version of Java is not there, but Kotlin has some things I never found in Java. It statically checks for possible null pointer errors, and you can define free functions (without a class definition). Another nice thing is being able to declare constructor parameters as fields at once, and also automatic generation of getters / setters with data classes. This saves a ton of boilerplate. Maybe Java has some or all of these things now, but last time I used it, it didn't. I don't see it as a tower of Babel, but you have to keep on learning.

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

#56

Post by AlexeyBrin »

PunksATawnyFill wrote: post #32
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.

Swift doesn't work natively on Windows which is a massive downer for many people.

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

#57

Post by dragandj »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #40
threeseed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

You mean like you have to be a registered Apple developer to sell your iOS app in their app store which captures 99.99% of the market? Java is, fortnately, out of Oracle’s reach unless your company is actively looking at “enterprisey” solutions, but in that case it probably makes more money from that sort of deals than it is paying to Oracle, so it’s all good...

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

#58

Post by dragandj »

yorwba wrote: post #43
nl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google vs Oracle isn't "no problems" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google... .

As far as I can tell, Oracle vs Google was due to Google not using OpenJDK, but their own implementation.

Moreover, their implementation didn’t work on standard compliand JVMs, and was called Java, despite being only similar to Java. Even Microsoft’s J++ worked on different JVMs if you didn’d use Windows specific classes...

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

#59

Post by pjmlp »

ptx wrote: post #48
pjmlp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Kotlin compiler still runs on the JVM. The native compiler is actually built with Excelsior JET, not with Kotlin/Native. (I think Nikolay Igotti, the Kotlin/Native lead, mentioned somewhere that the JVM is often faster for the kind of graph manipulation that the compiler does a lot of.)

Fair enough, although I imagine it is only a matter of Kotlin/Native maturity.

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

#60

Post by pjmlp »

scns wrote: post #38
pjmlp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Red Hat has taken over the maintainance of the already released Java 8 and Java 11, LTS versions, not development of new features.

This is a now somewhat outdated report of contributions per company to OpenJDK.

https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11...

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