What Is Kotlin and Why Use It In Programming?

If you’re a developer looking to learn more about Kotlin, check out our fourth suggestion from this list of great quality android app courses. To learn more about development basics across the board, check out G2’s web development hub or app development hub for ample resources to suit your needs. Once more, this feature makes Kotlin a more time-efficient programming language as compared to Java, which requires a lot of manual coding to be performed. For many years, Java was the one and only programming language for Android and server-side development. However, with the rise of Kotlin, its dominant position has changed.

what is kotlin language

Another reason for Kotlin’s higher-level safety lies in its benefits. Even if you have a large Java-based project with millions of code lines, you can easily convert it to Kotlin one file at a time and you’ll see everything still successfully compiling. Here in BLAKIT, we write our code in Kotlin and use Java only for maintaining old projects. Kotlin is the official language for Android, announced by Google in 2007. Since then, infinite programmers from all over the world and disciplines have started using Kotlin as their development technology. Any developer who wants to decrease their startup time can use lazy-loading features in Kotlin.

Why are companies making the switch to Kotlin?

You also explored what Kotlin is, and the history of the Kotlin language. You also learned about the features of the Kotlin language, its uses, and the companies that use the Kotlin language. Kotlin is supported by the official integrated development environment for Android development, Android Studio. So programmers can easily use Kotlin’s code when working on Android development. Many programmers use Kotlin/JVM for back-end web development because they’re writing less code than they would with Java, even if it’s the same code.

what is kotlin language

We have a dependencies verification feature enabled in the repository for all Gradle builds. It is recommended to use how to hire a kotlin developer the latest released version of Intellij IDEA . Kotlin’s creators made the language as simple and brief as possible.

Kotlin programming language: summary

Kotlin has classes with constructors, along with nested, inner, and anonymous inner classes, and it has interfaces like Java 8. To create a class instance, call the constructor just like a regular function. Based on the dozens of completed projects, there are lots of ready-made solutions and open-source libraries for Java development.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise given the fact that technology is constantly evolving, just like the expectations and needs of end customers. One of the more recent significant shifts refers to the surge in Kotlin development. No one could even predict that a new language would gain such popularity in such a short time. Not long ago, Java was considered to be the primary language of Android development. By including the “data” keyword in the class definition, you can avoid setting up everything manually. The compiler takes on the task and generates all necessary getters and setters automatically.

Companies Using the Kotlin Language

On 7 May 2019, Google announced that the Kotlin programming language is now its preferred language for Android app developers. Since the release of Android Studio 3.0 in October 2017, Kotlin has been included as an alternative to the standard Java compiler. Kotlin has been a show-stopper when it comes to developing apps for Android apps and Android app development companies. It is definitely going to be better since we have all the extensions of Java easily integrated with Kotlin. It is just advancing and offering the best features it could to all developers to leverage the best features in developing Kotlin-based applications.

  • It’s an object-oriented programming language that produces software for multiple platforms.
  • To override a superclass method, the method itself must be marked open, and the subclass method must be marked override.
  • Today, at the Google I/O keynote, the Android team announced first-class support for Kotlin.
  • The Kotlin developers integrated into the semantics the principles that prevent a variety of common mistakes usually happening during the program execution.
  • Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language, meaning it can be applied in a variety of spheres.

The best part about KMM is that you won’t need to introduce new programming languages to a codebase to make a cross-platform app. Not only does this simplify the mobile development process, but both Android and iOS users will be able to get their desired experience as a result. One of the reasons why companies choose Kotlin for mobile development is the ability to create cross-platform applications.

Code concision

It has a strong community – With a large and competent team working on it, Kotlin continuously improves its language. Not to mention, the https://globalcloudteam.com/ community is always growing and willing to help. Quality over quantity—you’ll be able to write less code all while improving readability.

This means that your existing codebase written in Java can interact properly with Kotlin, and vice versa. In the IDE, there is even a built-in automated Java-to-Kotlin converter. Making it consistent with Java’s frameworks and tools was very smart when you think about the adoption process and the implied risks of code migration. In Java, such expressions are checked during the compilation process. If a method has such an expression, the method should either handle it or developers need to specify them with the keyword ‘throws’. Kotlin, on the other hand, offers inherent null safety, meaning that no variable or object can be assigned with a null value.

JetBrains/kotlin

Kotlin was built by software development tool creators JetBrains in 2010. As most of their products were developed in Java, they decided to build a Java-based language that was more concise, while introducing new constructs such as high-order functions. Is a programming language that is compatible with Java and other languages.

what is kotlin language