The Kotlin Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#31

Post by melling » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

Interesting to watch Kotlin develop.

It came in and filled the niche that i always thought Scala would fill.

I’ve been doing mostly Swift for the past several years, and i love it.

Scala 3 looks interesting but it seems to be moving slowly.

I look forward to having another Java option if I ever get back to that platform. Java was cool in 1998 but after Swift, I’ll need something nicer on the JVM

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#32

Post by ta988 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #22

A question for HN - I like Java a lot for the ‘http API talking to SQL database’ usecase, with my goto for that being dropwizard or spring boot. I’ve only ever looked at Kotlin code in blogposts, haven’t ever actually used it. I’m probably at least a few years behind on its feature set, but I am aware of all the great features Java has added in that timeframe, many no doubt inspired by Kotlin! Would you advise me to…

You have to consider not only the language but what the team working on it will look like. It is still a bit hard to find server-side kotlin devs. On the other hand in my experience, Java devs pick up Kotlin really quickly (as do Python devs interestingly whereas they struggled with Java).

I'm a huge proponent of Kotlin on the server side, less on frontend (JS) side.

If you go with Kotlin and Spring Boot, Micronaut or even just Ktor,you'll likely not regret the choice. (I have no experience with DropWizard).

Now if you choose Java it will not be a horrible choice either, and it is not too hard to convert to Kotlin later if you need/want to. I've heard cases of people going back to Java a few years back, mostly for compiler performance reasons, but there has been a lot of effort on that recently. And while compiling Kotlin is still slower than compiling Java, the fact that you can divide things more easily in multiple files and incremental compilation compensates in most cases (except of course in the case f a clean build).

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#33

Post by vikingcaffiene » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #22

A question for HN - I like Java a lot for the ‘http API talking to SQL database’ usecase, with my goto for that being dropwizard or spring boot. I’ve only ever looked at Kotlin code in blogposts, haven’t ever actually used it. I’m probably at least a few years behind on its feature set, but I am aware of all the great features Java has added in that timeframe, many no doubt inspired by Kotlin! Would you advise me to…

I've been writing Kotlin professionally for the past 2 years. I'd highly recommend it as a worthy successor to Java. It's very powerful and thoughtfully designed. Java just feels so old and clunky after using it.

I've not had the pleasure but I hear Scala is great too.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#34

Post by redwood » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

Anyone try out https://github.com/realm/realm-kotlin for local state yet?

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#35

Post by ta988 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #31

Interesting to watch Kotlin develop. It came in and filled the niche that i always thought Scala would fill. I’ve been doing mostly Swift for the past several years, and i love it. Scala 3 looks interesting but it seems to be moving slowly. I look forward to having another Java option if I ever get back to that platform. Java was cool in 1998 but after Swift, I’ll need something nicer on the JVM

Coming from Swift, you will not be lost in Kotlin.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#36

Post by lordnacho » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #22

A question for HN - I like Java a lot for the ‘http API talking to SQL database’ usecase, with my goto for that being dropwizard or spring boot. I’ve only ever looked at Kotlin code in blogposts, haven’t ever actually used it. I’m probably at least a few years behind on its feature set, but I am aware of all the great features Java has added in that timeframe, many no doubt inspired by Kotlin! Would you advise me to…

I'm doing a kotlin project. You won't find it hard or unfamiliar if you're used to Java. You still got gradle, and you still can use whatever java lib you want. It just feels much nicer in kotlin. Just jump into it, you can swap back if it doesn't suit you.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#37

Post by crossroadsguy » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #22

A question for HN - I like Java a lot for the ‘http API talking to SQL database’ usecase, with my goto for that being dropwizard or spring boot. I’ve only ever looked at Kotlin code in blogposts, haven’t ever actually used it. I’m probably at least a few years behind on its feature set, but I am aware of all the great features Java has added in that timeframe, many no doubt inspired by Kotlin! Would you advise me to…

Kotlin outside of Android is still a fancy new thing. I am not commenting on its capability but the trend.

(On Android however it seems it's pretty much the only thing now. I am finding it the hard way now when I am looking for a job after staying on a project too long where things are still 98% Java)

It's an amazing language. Just try not to write "Java code" (as in the Java way) in Kotlin (like many Android devs I see doing).

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#38

Post by AndrewDucker » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

The_rationalist wrote: post #7

If you missed it, the latest investment from Google to the Kotlin compiler is the KSP plugin: https://github.com/google/ksp

I didn't even know Kerbal Space Program allowed that kind of plugin!

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#39

Post by tibiahurried » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

Tried Kotlin, honestly I was not impressed. Tools (maven/gradle) wasn't as straight forward to setup as one would have expected. I am not impressed with the language itself and I had issue with conflicting libraries and kotlin versions.

I switched back to modern Java and did not regret it.

Java is catching up at a fast pace, I don't think Kotlin will ever replace Java or see mass adoption.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#40

Post by ta988 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

yannoninator wrote: post #27

ta988 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google contributes a lot to Kotlin though. So they are not just sponsors.

Interesting perspective, so just like Rust then? Seems like Google can just buy board seats then.

If you mean by dedicating workforce (which costs money, and a lot for them because of their salaries policies) they are buying a seat? Yes. The same way a major contributor (not just code, but doc, funding, community building...) to a FOSS project often has more power on the decisions than users.

Now I would be unhappy to see a company that just pours millions in a project, gets to take decisions but doesn't do anything else to make the project better. But I don't believe that's the case here.