What Is Kotlin

Kotlin is an open-source programming language developed by JetBrains. Google also crowned Kotlin as the standard IDE for android development. In this tutorial on What is Kotlin, you will learn about Kotlin in detail. 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.

• It gives the ability to handle nullable data efficiently thanks to null-safety, which significantly helps to prevent app crashes.
• The 1.0 version was released in 2016, and no more than three years later, Google announced that Kotlin is the preferred language for Android.
• Kotlin was designed to be a better language than Java and interoperable with Java.
• It reduces time spent writing and maintaining the same code for different platforms while retaining the flexibility and benefits of native programming.
• As a statically typed language, Kotlin was initially designed to run on the JVM.

This reduces code cluttering to a minimum, ensuring that every line has meaning and isn’t just there for structure’s sake. Elluminati provides diverse mobility solutions helping SMBs, enterprises, government, and startups bestow tech stacks, rendering innovative touch to the business. As we are exploring these Guide, we will also throw light on some of the benefits it offers to businesses. Since it is a fault-proof option over Java, it gives a business a solution that could have a lesser possibility of failure or error.

Kotlin Multiplatform Development Help

Similar to Java and Scala, Kotlin is a statically-typed language, where checks on variable types are executed during compilation time. The main advantage of a statically-typed language kotlin development team is protection from runtime errors and faster execution times. This is because the compiler knows the exact data types that are in use and is able to produce optimized machine code.

In fact, the makers of Kotlin have specifically designed it to be easy to pick up. While mastering its most advanced features will definitely take a lot of time and effort, getting to grips with the basics should be fairly straightforward. This includes 1.3 million active developers – people who edit code from one month to the next. The only cogent argument I have seen for choosing Java over Kotlin would be for the case of complete Android development newbies. For them, there might be a barrier to surmount given that, historically, most Android documentation and examples are in Java.

Kotlin vs. Java

Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is an open-source technology by JetBrains for flexible cross-platform development. It allows you to create applications for various platforms and efficiently reuse code across them while retaining the benefits of native programming. With Kotlin Multiplatform, you can develop apps for Android, iOS, desktop, web, server-side, and other platforms. In This Kotlin tutorial, you’ll learn various important kotlin topics, including data types, control flow, functions, object-oriented programming, collections, and more. We will also delve into advanced concepts such as coroutines, null safety, and functional programming in Kotlin. Kotlin is a modern programming language that can run side by side with Java while being easier to write.

Programming languages are the building blocks of any software. To develop a software or an application, you need to be well-versed with various languages like Java, Python, PHP, etc. In this article, I will tell you what is Kotlin and its fundamentals. Kotlin is a general-purpose, statically typed, and open-source programming language. It runs on JVM and can be used anywhere Java is used today.

Kotlin Multiplatform capabilities

No matter your skillset, Kotlin’s goal is to provide programming language aimed to make developers happier. Since its initial release in 2016, Kotlin has gained immense popularity and quickly became one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Google announced Kotlin language as an official language for developing android applications in May 2017. After the announcement, the jobs for Kotlin increased in large numbers; since then, the job opportunities for Kotlin have doubled every three months as per Dice. Google, Netflix, Pinterest are some of the companies using Kotlin.

What’s more, you can also develop web applications (Kotlin Js) in Kotlin. It means you can develop an app for Android and iOS-based solutions using one code. This solution makes creating mobile and web apps much easier since you can share business logic between all platforms while retaining the ability to create a native UI.

Kotlin is simpler, making it easier for beginners to learn. Kotlin focuses on stripped-down, functional code and avoids repetitive boilerplate code. Semicolons at the end of every line are not needed, although Kotlin does not have an issue if a developer uses them. Additional features reduce the complexity and length of code needed to achieve the end goal of a Kotlin team. Kotlin supports the specification of a “primary constructor” as part of the class definition itself, consisting of an argument list following the class name.

Kotlin’s native binaries can run on macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, Linux, Windows and Android NDK. Ultimately, Kotlin produces either Java bytecode, JavaScript-compatible code or native binaries based on the target platform. Kotlin is a programming language that was released in 2011 by JetBrains, a company that sells integrated development environments (IDEs) for programming languages. Since then, it’s become a favorite language for developers and replaced Java in many software projects.