Android now supports Kotlin • Hacker News Board

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#51

Post by dcu » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:31 PM UTC

w8rbt wrote: post #42

I wonder if Android will ever support Go? Seems Google would want to do this.

the bigger issue with Go is the binary size

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#52

Post by kibwen » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:32 PM UTC

geodel wrote: post #14

bobsam wrote: post #3

Was hoping for golang but this is good too

I think Go is never going to be officially supported on Android. Dart, though, seems more likely as it is Java like VM based language. Go is going to have better support on Fuchsia OS from Google.

I don't doubt that Fuchsia will support Go, but Dart appears to already be Fuchsia's officially preferred userspace language (via Flutter).

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#53

Post by dep_b » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:32 PM UTC

0xFFC wrote: post #36

bitmapbrother wrote: post #28

Looks like Kotlin will soon be skyrocketing to the top of the TIOBE charts.

And a little bit of drop in java ranking

God I hope so. Every time I see Java up there I feel the suffering of a million souls having to deal with it.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#54

Post by sswezey » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

This, along with recent Kotlin Native news, lends me to believe Google is investigating some alternative platforms for replacing their dependence on Java APIs and removing any possibility of being further hamstrung by Oracle.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#55

Post by thawab » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:34 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #8

Google/Android's answer to Swift?

I prefer to think it's an answer to java/oracle.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#56

Post by threeseed » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #33

Oracle winds up killing another golden goose they aquired from Sun. That's what they do though. They buy innovative technology companies who have committed customer bases and then slowly squeeze all the money out of them until they can migrate off. By then they've aquired another set of victim customers.

Not sure what you're rambling about.

Java is still and always will be the core language of the JVM. It isn't going anywhere and the Java team (comprising mostly ex-Sun people) continues to push the language forward under Oracle's fantastic stewardship. The issue is that Java is required to be more stable than other languages since it powers so many production, enterprise system and hence will be slower to innovate.

I have seen no widespread movement to jump from the Java/JVM ship if anything more and more people are moving towards it because of languages like Scala, Clojure, Kotlin etc.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#57

Post by dep_b » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

Good move. Out with possible null pointers everywhere for no freaking reason at all. It's 2017.

Apple did a great job with Swift but launched it when it wasn't mature yet but Kotlin will have JetBrains level of IDE support from the get go so and it's mature already only a luddite would stay with Java.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#58

Post by ajross » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #22

geodel wrote: post #5

Well this looks like going to push Kotlin in big league. I remember scala enthusiasts made big noise in last few years to have scala as officially supported language. But Google seems to prefer a closer relationship with Jetbrains.

Scala never worked that well, for example it requires several steps, focus on sbt, requires the pure InteliJ version instead of Android Studio, thus forcing developers to be a few versions behind on Android plugins. http://scala-on-android.taig.io/sources/

IIRC Scala also has a decidedly non-trivial runtime library with its own set of abstractions, where Kotlin is basically "better syntax" on top the existing JDK/Android library ecosystem. Writing Scala to deal with an existing Java framework "feels like" working with an FFI, where in Kotlin it's more natural.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#59

Post by invalidname » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:37 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: 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…

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.

Re: Android now supports Kotlin

#60

Post by mangoman » Wed, May 17, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

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?