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)
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)
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