21–30 of 51 posts
Kotlin is one of those things that I avoided learning for so long just because I didn't want to learn another new thing. And one day I had to work on a project that was 100% kotlin and so i decided to do a 3 hour crash course on Youtube (actually watched it at 3x speed so it was really 1 hour) and once I grasped the basics it really made so much sense and I don't think I'm ever going back to writing Java classes anym…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Java developers are rightfully conservative and sceptical of "new things". That said I believe Kotlin really provides a strong value proposition over Java. You also don't sacrifice much, there is less tools ofc but enough to get by, performance is equal for the most part etc. Also unlike stuff like CS it has a very strong future with Android backing.
Oracle does a really good job improving the Java language. I really don't see any reason for why I should start using Kotlin. I use Groovy when I just need to do something fast without all the boilerplate code. But for 95% of the business problems, plain old Java is exactly what I need. For anything else, its Rust, Python, Javascript that shines in each of their category.
Kotlin is one of those things that I avoided learning for so long just because I didn't want to learn another new thing. And one day I had to work on a project that was 100% kotlin and so i decided to do a 3 hour crash course on Youtube (actually watched it at 3x speed so it was really 1 hour) and once I grasped the basics it really made so much sense and I don't think I'm ever going back to writing Java classes anym…
Why do you feel like that about Coffeescript?
Kotlin has this amazing concept called compiler plugins where you can extend, intercept and alter the compiler at any stage of the compilation pipeline (ast, psi, ir) through an API. There even are frameworks that make writing such plugins easier such as https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow-meta (which enable to bring union type, higher kinded types, pattern matching, etc) Or https://github.com/google/ksp
While this is cool, it doesn't look like something very different from other existing JVM compiler plugins... it seems quite similar to Javac plugins[0] and perhaps somewhere in between that and Groovy AST transformers[1]. Manifold[2] is basically a javac plugin if I'm not mistaken, and it shows just how powerful stuff can be accomplished with this approach (including e.g. auto-generation of Java types from common mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oracle is doing a good job adding features to Java to keep up with modern languages, but it’s not just about adding — some things need to be removed or changed. By way of example: Final classes by default with an open keyword instead of open by default with a final keyword. Inheritance is a very tricky thing to get right and it’s better to explicitly say “I thought about this and put in the effort to make it work”. C…
> Final classes by default with an open keyword ...is exactly the wrong way around. Inheritance is very much about unplanned reuse and programming by difference. That is: there is something that almost works the way you want, but not quite. If you are actually planning this ahead, then typically inheritance is the wrong approach and you're better off using composition.
Interfaces are completely free of this burden. Abstract classes signal that you're working with an incomplete implementation and you're expected to cooperate with the base case to make things work. Final classes just opt out of this whole thing altogether.
What, exactly, does a class being open say? In a default-open context, you don't know whether this is an omission or a design choice. In a default-final context, you're explicitly allowed to mess with the class (and, because of the explicitly open methods, only in safe ways).
Kotlin has this amazing concept called compiler plugins where you can extend, intercept and alter the compiler at any stage of the compilation pipeline (ast, psi, ir) through an API. There even are frameworks that make writing such plugins easier such as https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow-meta (which enable to bring union type, higher kinded types, pattern matching, etc) Or https://github.com/google/ksp
While this is cool, it doesn't look like something very different from other existing JVM compiler plugins... it seems quite similar to Javac plugins[0] and perhaps somewhere in between that and Groovy AST transformers[1]. Manifold[2] is basically a javac plugin if I'm not mistaken, and it shows just how powerful stuff can be accomplished with this approach (including e.g. auto-generation of Java types from common mo…
It would be nice to have a list of such extensions of the language/bytecode
Kotlin is one of those things that I avoided learning for so long just because I didn't want to learn another new thing. And one day I had to work on a project that was 100% kotlin and so i decided to do a 3 hour crash course on Youtube (actually watched it at 3x speed so it was really 1 hour) and once I grasped the basics it really made so much sense and I don't think I'm ever going back to writing Java classes anym…
Java developers are rightfully conservative and sceptical of "new things". That said I believe Kotlin really provides a strong value proposition over Java. You also don't sacrifice much, there is less tools ofc but enough to get by, performance is equal for the most part etc. Also unlike stuff like CS it has a very strong future with Android backing.
Kotlin is one of those things that I avoided learning for so long just because I didn't want to learn another new thing. And one day I had to work on a project that was 100% kotlin and so i decided to do a 3 hour crash course on Youtube (actually watched it at 3x speed so it was really 1 hour) and once I grasped the basics it really made so much sense and I don't think I'm ever going back to writing Java classes anym…
Try Clojure after which there's definitely no going back.
There's my crash course in Kotlin