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The Kotlin Foundation

kotlinlang.org

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Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#201

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pjmlp wrote: post #200
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a great language to use instead of Java...especially for things that have to run on the JVM, or Android.

Syntax sugar on the JVM, as it is never to be more than a blip on the Java Virtual Machine. As for the Android Runtime, Android team is gatekeeping Android Java on Java 8 subset on purpose, as means to serve their political games to push Kotlin no matter what. Kotlin without godfather Google will just fade away.

I have no idea about any politics involved, but Kotlin is a really well designed language. Fixing Java piecemeal as has happened so far just seems like an impossible task, while the JVM is flexible enough to support it.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#202

Post by pjmlp »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #201
pjmlp wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syntax sugar on the JVM, as it is never to be more than a blip on the Java Virtual Machine. As for the Android Runtime, Android team is gatekeeping Android Java on Java 8 subset on purpose, as means to serve their political games to push Kotlin no matter what. Kotlin without godfather Google will just fade away.

I have no idea about any politics involved, but Kotlin is a really well designed language. Fixing Java piecemeal as has happened so far just seems like an impossible task, while the JVM is flexible enough to support it.

You have no idea? Missing the news?

Google lets Android Java stagnate on purpose on Java 8 subset, with cherry picked APIs from newer OpenJDK versions, uses this language subset to sell Kotlin features over Java features on code samples comparisasions.

Nowadays, all Android developer channels, regardless on which form, are all inundated with Kotlin material and how great it is over "Java" (actually Android Java).

As for JVM being flexible enough to support Kotlin, doesn't seem to be appreciated by the Kotlin community that spits on the hand that has made the language possible to exist in first place.

Language wars don't have a place when languages share the same platform, as such I have zero tolerance for communities that cargo cult otherwise.

When Kotlin is so great and doesn't need Java for anything, they should port everything into Kotlin/Native and succeed on its own merits.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#203

Post by brabel »

pjmlp wrote: post #179
the_only_law wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ever happened to it? I recall Groovy and Grails being pretty big in the Java world several years ago.

The interest died off, JUGs stop talking about it and everyone went back to Java, while some of us got money to port those projects back to Java. Had it not been for Gradle, and there would be hardly a reason to learn it in 2021, other than historical interest.

Where I work we use Groovy heavily for testing (with the Spock Framework - which is amazing), in our Jenkins pipelines, and for Gradle Plugins in our build.

I see a pretty active community around it and lots of new releases (from the libraries and the language itself) coming up all the time. Your picture of Groovy being dead couldn't be more wrong in my experience.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#204

Post by pjmlp »

brabel wrote: post #203
pjmlp wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interest died off, JUGs stop talking about it and everyone went back to Java, while some of us got money to port those projects back to Java. Had it not been for Gradle, and there would be hardly a reason to learn it in 2021, other than historical interest.

Where I work we use Groovy heavily for testing (with the Spock Framework - which is amazing), in our Jenkins pipelines, and for Gradle Plugins in our build. I see a pretty active community around it and lots of new releases (from the libraries and the language itself) coming up all the time. Your picture of Groovy being dead couldn't be more wrong in my experience.

A programming language is alive as long as there is one developer using it, doesn't mean it still matters at scale.

As mentioned, Gradle is still around.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#205

Post by pjmlp »

jpgvm wrote: post #77
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…

Kotlin is taking off on the backend. It took a little longer than some people might have hoped but all the big boys are doing backend development in Kotlin now. Square/Netflix/Uber/Twitter/AirBnB all traditionally Java houses have adopted Kotlin in one way or another. Scala on the other hand is facing a decline. Less so in Big Data where it is still doing well but I find increasingly it's not being chosen for new bac…

By the same big boys that were so big into Scala 5 years ago,.....

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#206

Post by pjmlp »

dbsmith83 wrote: post #145
chrisseaton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's way more than terse classes. The syntax everywhere is cleaner. Higher order functions look so much nicer. Using val/var is superior to having to remember to write 'final' all the time. Kotlin also handles nullability way better. Ah, also, default arguments for constructors/methods. These features prevent a lot of developer mistakes, and thus better code is often achieved. Also, Kotlin usually forges ahead on fea…

Java and JVM are developed together, Kotlin just adds syntax sugar on top.

If Kotlin is so much better, why doesn't JetBrains just port everything into Kotlin/Native?

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#207

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pjmlp wrote: post #202
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea about any politics involved, but Kotlin is a really well designed language. Fixing Java piecemeal as has happened so far just seems like an impossible task, while the JVM is flexible enough to support it.

You have no idea? Missing the news? Google lets Android Java stagnate on purpose on Java 8 subset, with cherry picked APIs from newer OpenJDK versions, uses this language subset to sell Kotlin features over Java features on code samples comparisasions. Nowadays, all Android developer channels, regardless on which form, are all inundated with Kotlin material and how great it is over "Java" (actually Android Java). As…

The JVM is just a detail, as a language designer, an utterly boring one. Who cares if your language is running on that or via native compilation. In fact, after seeing what happened at Microsoft with UwP, I’ll take convenience over ahead of time compilation any day.

I also find language politics to be incredibly boring. Maybe you have a point, but I just want to write code in a language that isn’t 10 years out of date.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#208

Post by pjmlp »

adsharma wrote: post #193

Kotlin as a competitive next gen language In order for Kotlin to be taken seriously outside Android, especially in relation to Swift/Rust as a native language, it needs a few changes. 1. Make the compiler native binary and competitive with other languages for startup times outside Gradle workflow. 2. Support linux CLI and make/cake work flow as a first class citizen. 3. Support Linux as a host for Kotlin multiplatfor…

> Right now C is the only true multiplatform language

I have been doing pretty alright with Ada, Object Pascal, D, Go, Rust, C#, C++ and Java (yes even on iOS).

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#209

Post by pjmlp »

hnrodey wrote: post #24

Any thoughts on if we are seeing the beginnings of a JetBrains acquisition from Google? There seem to be significant overlap between the JetBrains investments (people capital, intellectual property: IDE, language) and Google significantly using all of these things. edit: lol @ the down votes

It would be interesting, which just makes using Eclipse and Netbeans to this day, an even better decision.

Re: The Kotlin Foundation

#210

Post by pjmlp »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #178
tibiahurried wrote: post #39

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.

Kotlin has already pretty much replaced Java for Android devs. I see it doing something similar to Java use more generally (albeit more slowly than it did with Android).

Of course it did, Google is making that decision a reality.

On the JVM, Kotlin doesn't matter, it is just another language that pretends to be Java when compiled to Java Virtual Machine bytecode.

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