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The Kotlin Foundation

kotlinlang.org

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Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#81

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Other than Android, where Google is pushing Kotlin no matter what, I would use the platform's official language, Java.

No need for FFI, additional IDE plugins, it works across all Java IDEs, no need for idiomatic plugins, annotations to make code understandable by the JVM, full access to JVM opcodes without constraints or special cases, and it will be around as long as the Java Virtual Machine matters to the industry.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#83

Post by steveklabnik »

yannoninator wrote: post #2

Rust, Python and now Kotlin. Just as PSF promoted Google to visionary sponsor, although I understand Jetbrains, but we see yet again our saviour Google on the board of yet another language, even after Rust formed its foundation. I guess I have no choice to accept this future we've put ourselves in.

What is your specific dislike about Google on the Rust Foundation board?

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#84

Post by chrisseaton »

peheje wrote: post #70
chrisseaton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd choose Java over Kotlin. The benefits of Kotlin seem minor - mostly syntactic sugar - and the tooling is more limited than Java. They seem to solve problems with kludges (like their coroutines are really just state machines in JVM bytecode, which creates issues like irreducible control-flow) rather than properly engineering solutions like Java try to do.

But... When Java gets "properly engineered solution" for async code... Kotlin got it as well!

So why bother using Kotlin?

Seems like it fixes trivial things (makes simple classes a bit more terse) but retains the more fundamental problems and hangs on for Java to actually fix those.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#85

Post by jsiepkes »

Pxtl wrote: post #67
johnnycerberus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kotlin never appealed to backend developers (based on job ads, new open-source projects in the domain). Data pipelines, concurrency and streaming are becoming more and more part of what a backend dev should know. Instead, I've noticed that Scala is used in many systems where Java historically was less ergonomic for the task. Spark, Delta, Deequ, Scio, Finagle, Flink, Kafka, the Typelevel & ZIO ecosystems, Akka are so…

I think a big part of the appeal of Kotlin was that Scala was impractical for use on Android so Kotlin slid in as "the missing pieces" of Java.

Yeah also somewhere after Java 7 (I think) Java stagnated because the next version was too ambitious (stuck in development-hell). To get back on track they cut a bunch of features, labelled it Java 8 and moved Jigsaw (the biggest hurdle) to Java 9. After this they also moved to the fixed release cycles.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#86

Post by pjmlp »

sorokod wrote: post #41
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 work in a fintech company, most of our backend is in Kotlin with "legacy" functionality in Java. Can't think of a single developer that would choose Java over Kotlin.

Here is one, outside Android, Kotlin is other guest language that will fail to take Java's place on the Java Virtual Machine.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#87

Post by no_wizard »

yannoninator wrote: post #43
nolok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why the victim complex about Apple in your comment, he said too few companies do it and that remains true whether or not Apple is in that group. In fact that conversation has nothing to do with Apple.

> I'm not sure why the victim complex about Apple in your comment, he said too few companies do it Sure it's all good when companies fund projects they use, but that does not mean they should instantly get a board seat. It makes sense why Jane Street sponsors OCaml, does not mean they instantly get a board seat. I don't see Jane Street sponsoring RISC-V and getting a board seat do I? And it doesn't make sense to do s…

Google is highly invested Kotlin and it’s success with Android and what I’m certain is the fact that they have huge Java code adds that I could see them having real value in slowly converting to kotlin and allowing Kotlin to be the first class choice where Java would be.

Honestly I just don’t see it here. Google’s marketplace ambitions have not surfaced in these foundations. I would Love a real tangible counter example of Google leveraging their seat on a language committee to control the language in such a way it only furthers Googles interests. Even with the browser I don’t see them outright controlling tc39 or WHATWG/W3C or the CSS working group. Otherwise HTML imports would be a thing right now (and arguably they should be but that’s another debate)

I don’t defend what they’re doing with Chrome the product but they so far have seemed to be pretty sane with standards bodies

The thing about Google or any entity of their size is that they’re huge and lots of different types of people work there, and I’d wave most aren’t malicious

That doesn’t handwave legitimate complaints here and I don’t like Google have arbitrary outsized influence either but I don’t think that’s the case with these commuters/foundations

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#88

Post by pjmlp »

peheje wrote: post #70
chrisseaton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd choose Java over Kotlin. The benefits of Kotlin seem minor - mostly syntactic sugar - and the tooling is more limited than Java. They seem to solve problems with kludges (like their coroutines are really just state machines in JVM bytecode, which creates issues like irreducible control-flow) rather than properly engineering solutions like Java try to do.

But... When Java gets "properly engineered solution" for async code... Kotlin got it as well!

Not at all, because Kotlin wants to take it all, so they need to make the choice if they want to expose JVM features, or keep the language portable across all platforms that JetBrains wants to target with Kotlin.

A good example is Kotlin/Native, by choosing a memory model incompatible with JVM code they failed, and were forced to go back into the drawing board for Kotlin/Native with a proper tracing GC.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#89

Post by maxpert »

I’ve used Kotlin on Server Side in production at a pretty significant scale and I think it’s the most underrated thing for people using JVM on servers. I recently had a podcast with one of Spring dev advocates (Josh Long) https://spring.io/blog/2021/02/11/a-bootiful-podcast-doordas... (shameless plug) and brought similar discussion to table. I will seriously urge folks to try it and hopefully foundation will bring more goodness!

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#90

Post by balfirevic »

chrisseaton wrote: post #78
balfirevic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Java (as opposed to JVM) try to properly engineer solution to the problem coroutines were created to solve?

> How did Java (as opposed to JVM) Well that’s the point - they solved it in the JVM not as a kludge of bytecode.

Well, once that happened Kotlin also gets the solution.

It's rude and unfair to call out a language as "solving the problems with kludges" when they literally could not have done anything better.

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