Skip to main content

Kotlin, the Swift of Android

Now that Apple replaced Objective-C with Swift for iOS, the lack of a less archaic language for Android development has become more apparent.

For the desperate and adventurous there are the JVM alternatives like Scala and Groovy, but using them with Android is expensive: importing a language means importing the whole runtime, which is a nightmare for the package size and method count. Fine for small applications, but they are not what you are trying to solve with a better language.

Kotlin
Introducing Kotlin -- JVM-based language made by JetBrains (folks behind IntelliJ IDEA and, by extension, Android Studio) and named after an island near Saint Petersburg, which is where the development office behind the project is located. Introduced in 2011, it's been around for a few years now and the Android support came in the second milestone release (M2).

Expecting the standard reaction: yes, another JVM alternative, but this one is specifically designed to be light by excluding all the domain-specific heft and only keeping the core features missing from Java. If that sounds good, read on.

Mike Gouline
Official Kotlin Blog

Kotlin is coming!



Trends Google

The Dark Path

 Over the last few months I’ve dabbled in two new languages. Swift and Kotlin. These two languages have a number of similarities. Indeed, the similarities are so stark that I wonder if this isn’t a new trend in our language churn. If so, it is a dark path.

The Clean Code Blog (Robert C. Martin)

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Favorite Posts

How to link to TestFlight App in iOS

There are two things you need to do. First, check to see if TestFlight is installed. Then create a new link to your app. NSURL *customAppURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"itms-beta://"]; if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:customAppURL]) {     // TestFlight is installed     // Special link that includes the app's Apple ID     customAppURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://beta.itunes.apple.com/v1/app/978489855"];      [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:customAppURL]; } This special https://beta.itunes.apple.com URL will be opened directly in TestFlight. Finally, if you are using iOS 9 (or later), you need to make an addition to your Info.plist to get the canOpenURL: method to work. If your app is linked on or after iOS 9.0, you must declare the URL schemes you want to pass to this method. Do this by using the LSApplicationQueriesSchemes array in your Xcode project’s Info.plist file. For each URL scheme you wan...
Post a Comment
Read more

Working natively with JavaScript in iOS and Android without WebView

Using JavaScript code from native code without using a WebView (sic!) can be really useful to introduce dynamic functionality that was updatable without need of updating the app shorter iteration cycles share code between backend and native iOS and Android apps You can have business logic provided by a JavaScript that then controls the app that inject native functionality in the JavaScript context. You could even write an A/B testing framework based on this approach. iOS iOS offers the native JavaScriptCore: Evaluate JavaScript programs from within an app, and support JavaScript scripting of your app. So you can evaluate a script and read its return value natively: context.evaluateScript(myLib); let result = context.evaluateScript("myFunction();") let myFunction = context.objectForKeyedSubscription("myFunction"); let parametrizedResult = myFunction.invokeMethod(...) Or you can inject a native object into the JavaScript engine: @objc protoco...
1 comment
Read more

Xcode 7.2: Refactoring not supported for Swift... but there is a plugin!

but... there is a plugin for that: Refactorator GitHub
Post a Comment
Read more

Validity Time Auto-Renewables in Sandbox

The subscription durations, sandbox durations and incentive durations of auto-renewables. Hint: In Sandbox the validity time differs from live environment!!! Durations Sandbox Duration Incentive Durations (optional) 7 days 3 minutes 7 days 1 month 5 minutes 7 days, 1 month 2 months 10 minutes 7 days, 1 month 3 months 15 minutes 1 month 6 months 30 minutes 1 month, 2 months 1 year 1 hour 1 month, 2 months, 3 months After 6 extensions the abo is cancelled automatically in the sandbox environment.
Post a Comment
Read more

Bundeskartellamt prüft Apples Tracking-Regelungen für Dritt-Apps (ATT, App Tracking Transparency Framework)

Das Bundeskartellamt hat gegen das Technologieunternehmen Apple ein Verfahren zur kartellrechtlichen Prüfung seiner Tracking-Regelungen sowie des App Tracking Transparency Framework eingeleitet. Das Bundeskartellamt geht dabei insbesondere dem Anfangsverdacht nach, dass diese Regelungen Apples eigene Angebote bevorzugt behandeln und/oder andere Unternehmen behindern könnten. 14.06.2022 Pressemeldung Bundeskartellamt
Post a Comment
Read more

Employee Development ...by Cards ...by Lego Brick Boards

Employee Development by using Skill Cards The goal is to build a hand of cards that make up that person’s most relevant personal growth areas. To do this, both the people leader and team member start with a deck of the same skill cards each. In private, each goes through this deck and sorts these cards into three stacks: not relevant, good enough, and to improve. By discussing why each card was placed where, with particular focus on those that do not match, a real, structured, and to-the-point conversation occurs. By focusing on reasoning—what led you to place this card here?—both can develop a shared understanding of the other's views. The main event, however, comes in focusing on those cards in “to improve”. To create focus and drive actual impact, these cards are discussed and prioritized. With a clear priority and a shared understanding of the individual aspects of each, tangible actions are crafted that can be taken to grow one’s career. LinkedIn Rob Sawyer mobi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microservice Micro-Feature architecture for mobile Apps

RIBs is the cross-platform architecture framework behind many mobile apps at Uber. The name RIBs is short for Router, Interactor and Builder, which are core components of this architecture. This framework is designed for mobile apps with a large number of engineers and nested states. The RIBs architecture provides: Shared architecture across iOS and Android. Build cross-platform apps that have similar architecture, enabling iOS and Android teams to cross-review business logic code. Testability and Isolation. Classes must be easy to unit test and reason about in isolation. Individual RIB classes have distinct responsibilities like: routing, business, view logic, creation. Plus, most RIB logic is decoupled from child RIB logic. This makes RIB classes easy to test and reason about independently. Tooling for developer productivity. RIBs come with IDE tooling around code generation, memory leak detection, static analysis and runtime integrations - all which improve developer product...
Post a Comment
Read more