31–40 of 89 posts
I think Kotlin is the statically-typed language I've been waiting for, especially with the team's interest in native and JS targets.
A few weeks ago I wrote the same application four times in four different JVM languages: Java, Groovy, Scala, and Kotlin, with a particular focus on the application using functional techniques and types as well as being reactive. I also included as goals complete test coverage with a preferred test framework from each language and complete build tooling, all within a single Gradle project. The only significant source…
What functinal techniques did you use? Only higher order functions or did you go all the way to applicatives, monads (maybe even free) etc.? btw: is the source code available somwhere? Would be interesting to see a comparison between the languages.
Kotlin for me is Java made right. It's not complex, it has awesome interoperability with Java, it uses JDK, not reinventing its own wheels and it has everything I need from modern language. But it seems that Jetbrains has its own vision for Kotlin being a completely independent language. So while it works for me right now, I'm not sure if it will work in the future. They are going native and it'll bring a lot of chan…
I completely agree. Kotlin is close to the ideal language for me because it is just Java done right. If they want to go native and can do it without impairing any of the JVM usability, I guess go for it. But I don't see the point behind it. I don't develop native apps so maybe I just don't know enough, but it seems like Go and Rust have already satisfied the desire for modern natively compiled languages. I feel the s…
I find it's a fundamentally better language than both and so being able to write CLI tools and other smaller stuff in it would be nice while still being able to leverage Kotlin + JVM on the backend would also be nice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scala's complexity and performance issues Is Kotlin really faster than Scala?
Scala's build times are legendarily horrible. Kotlin has similar compile times to Javac.
Kotlin for me is Java made right. It's not complex, it has awesome interoperability with Java, it uses JDK, not reinventing its own wheels and it has everything I need from modern language. But it seems that Jetbrains has its own vision for Kotlin being a completely independent language. So while it works for me right now, I'm not sure if it will work in the future. They are going native and it'll bring a lot of chan…
I completely agree. Kotlin is close to the ideal language for me because it is just Java done right. If they want to go native and can do it without impairing any of the JVM usability, I guess go for it. But I don't see the point behind it. I don't develop native apps so maybe I just don't know enough, but it seems like Go and Rust have already satisfied the desire for modern natively compiled languages. I feel the s…
>[...] but it seems like Go and Rust have already satisfied the desire for modern natively compiled languages
Not for me. Go's type system is too primitive, and Rust is maybe too low level if you don't need the advantages compared to languages with a GC. So a language like Kotlin with a better type system (than go) fits nicely in between the two (that might change if Rust get's a GC type). Especially since it will probably have (or has already?) better tooling considering that Jetbreains is behind it.
http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/FromfirstprinciplesWhyIbetonScal...
I have a few concerns about Kotlin's JS backend:
How much can the complete JS bundle be optimized by an advanced whole-program optimizer like the Google Closure Compiler?
Kotlin for JS has no reflection, and I think JetBrains should not look into that as they said they are. But is there powerful compile-time code generation instead, e.g. through annotation processors?
Is there, or will there be, a healthy ecosystem of pure-Kotlin libraries that can be used with both the JVM and JS?
Developing a modern frontend app is complex enough with Javascript or Typescript. It's pretty hard to ask people to figure it out from scratch in Kotlin by just saying that it's possible but not showing how.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scala's build times are legendarily horrible. Kotlin has similar compile times to Javac.
They are working on improving them though, specially with Dotty. In any case they aren't as bad as C++ (at least until modules arrive).
Speaking as a fan of Scala, I find that scalac takes a noticeable amount of time even to compile trivial Hello World-type programs. Huge C++ codebases like Chromium or Boost take ages to compile, but I seriously doubt a comparable Scala codebase would be faster.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. Kotlin is close to the ideal language for me because it is just Java done right. If they want to go native and can do it without impairing any of the JVM usability, I guess go for it. But I don't see the point behind it. I don't develop native apps so maybe I just don't know enough, but it seems like Go and Rust have already satisfied the desire for modern natively compiled languages. I feel the s…
Personally I'm intrigued by Kotlin Native as a replacement for Python and Go tools without requiring the JVM. I find it's a fundamentally better language than both and so being able to write CLI tools and other smaller stuff in it would be nice while still being able to leverage Kotlin + JVM on the backend would also be nice.
The post specifically mentions using Kotlin Javascript to develop React applications. Are there any simple examples out there showing this? I'm not seeing any after a quick google search and look through the docs. Developing a modern frontend app is complex enough with Javascript or Typescript. It's pretty hard to ask people to figure it out from scratch in Kotlin by just saying that it's possible but not showing how…