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Android now supports Kotlin

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131–140 of 225 posts

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#131
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has no value for Google. If Google wanted to get rid of JVM technology and idioms on Android then it would be better off with pure native language like Swift/Rust/Go. They all are quite further away from Javaism. Kotlin's great value is mostly because it is Java like and run on JVM.

Kotlin supports automated conversion of Java into Kotlin code. This means you could quickly transform any existing app into a Kotlin Native app quickly.

And its fast, easy and works, unlike the crap swift3 converter apple pumped out

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#133
post #132

why not use llvm as virtual machine instead of JVM assuming backward compatibility is not an issue.

Backwards compatibility is an issue when 50% of users aren't even using Lollipop yet. Also LLVM is no longer an actual VM.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#134
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nothing against Kotlin. It seems to be coming out of nowhere to surpass more "tested" languages for lack of a better way of putting it, but as I'm reading about it I can truly see the appeal. The one thing I'm having trouble figuring out, though, is how much it diverges from Java in terms of inheritance, traits, etc. The verbosity of Java is one thing, but its inheritance system is what made me want to pull my…

It's weird you'd accuse Kotlin of throwing stuff at the wall while simultaneously speaking kind of Scala. Scala has so many competing ideas & approaches just all mashed up into a blob.

Scala isn't so much a mishmash as it is fertile ground for people to do all kinds of weird stuff that looks like part of the language. Very much like C++, with the same potential for committing atrocities. And like C++ was, it's great from a programmer perspective (long lever, you get what you want/deserve) but bad from a corporate perspective. (Somehow C++ acquired an aura of corporate respectability, but in retrospect it's surprising, considering it has the same problems as Scala: a difficult and sometimes esoteric language, hard to hire for, amplifies programmers instead of smoothing them out, easy to misuse with tragic results, might walk by a developer's desk and see them consulting a book instead of pounding out LOC, etc.)

I'm thrilled that Google is supporting Kotlin, though. Official support for Scala was never going to happen, and Kotlin sounds like a huge step up. I regret sinking so much time into struggling with Scala on Android.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is its performance on the device and size overhead is horrible. Javafxpackager is just about the worse too. Check out Codename One which is more like Swing but far more robust. The GUI builder isn't as refined as scene builder but the final product actually works everywhere and far more portable than anything else.

Codename one "Professional Edition" is $79 per month! Basic is $19 per month... As a kind of "indie" developer that is very expensive. Gluon Mobile is not much less expensive at $42 per month. Still, free edition looks better than Codename 1 free edition. Wondering if Jetbrains will release Kotlin/Native for a set price or charge monthly like most companies are doing these days.

Had to try Gluon Mobile for work for some weeks, being a complete newb to JavaFX.

I build a simple Pacman game. Running on Android wasn't a problem even though the builds took an entire minute to complete.

Compiling and running on iPhone was a nightmare though: At the beginning of the project I was able to run it - some days later I had to tweak the RAM being allocated to the trans/com/whatever-piler - a week later and the weeks after I was unable to compile it at all, there just wasn't enough in my MacBook to throw at the thing.

And the subjective performance was relatively bad too. They tried to reimplement Material Design and it looks somewhat like it, but it performs pretty badly.

Even their own conference app demoing Gluon Mobile is terrible and that says a lot.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is its performance on the device and size overhead is horrible. Javafxpackager is just about the worse too. Check out Codename One which is more like Swing but far more robust. The GUI builder isn't as refined as scene builder but the final product actually works everywhere and far more portable than anything else.

Codename one "Professional Edition" is $79 per month! Basic is $19 per month... As a kind of "indie" developer that is very expensive. Gluon Mobile is not much less expensive at $42 per month. Still, free edition looks better than Codename 1 free edition. Wondering if Jetbrains will release Kotlin/Native for a set price or charge monthly like most companies are doing these days.

[deleted]

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Codename one "Professional Edition" is $79 per month! Basic is $19 per month... As a kind of "indie" developer that is very expensive. Gluon Mobile is not much less expensive at $42 per month. Still, free edition looks better than Codename 1 free edition. Wondering if Jetbrains will release Kotlin/Native for a set price or charge monthly like most companies are doing these days.

Codename One is open source and has a free edition without nag screen or any license restrictions. For that $19 you get more platforms and no need for a Mac etc.

But you have to use their BS cloud build service? Hell no.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#138

This is pretty big. I really like Kotlin, but when I tried to integrate it into my app, it just didn't play well with popular libraries which rely on compile time code generation (Google's Dagger fork, Icepick, Parcels, etc). Has support for this improved / is it easy to integrate?

I have a project with Kotlin + Dagger + DataBinding. Annotation processing works fine with kotlin. First setup can be a pain though, especially if you are not familiar with Android or the gradle build system.

I'm hopeful that with official support this process will become smoother

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#139
post #2

Funny, I was messing around with Kotlin for the first time last night. So far, the language seems well-structured and I really like that one gets all of Java's ecosystem without actually having to write java. (Also, "override fun" just sounds hilarious. Bwaha!) Throw in TornadoFX and Gluon Scene Builder (formerly of Oracle) and you're spinning up high-quality cross-platform GUIs faster than Atom, with a visual editor…

New to Kotlin + ecosystem... So can you build Android UI's with Scene Builder? I see notes about it working with Gluon Mobile which appears to be a cross platform mobile library.

For Android, just use it's UI toolkit. It'll work better than trying to shoehorn a 3rd party thing in.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#140
post #46

Would be lovely if they officially supported Clojure too.

Google has chosen to support kotlin because the community has very strongly pushed in that direction. I am not too familiar with Clojure, what would it bring us that kotlin (or java) don't have ?

Parenthesis.

And lots of other things too. I just wanted to make a lisp joke. I will see myself out.

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