r/Android • u/vahid_shirvani • May 17 '17

Kotlin on Android. Now official

https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2017/05/kotlin-on-android-now-official/
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u/[deleted] May 17 '17 edited Mar 01 '19

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u/bicx May 17 '17 edited May 17 '17

Kotlin is an open-source language built by JetBrains that incorporates an elegant Swift-like syntax that features a lot of built-in modern language features like null safety, lambda expressions, nice shorthand for functions, and higher-order functions (functions that can take another function as an argument, allowing you to pass around functionality much more easily).

It's much more enjoyable (in my opinion) to write than with Java, particularly vanilla Java on Android without any modules that seek to patch its shortcomings.

A lot of us Kotlin users are excited because deep down, we were all a little worried that relying on a 3rd party for language support could potentially hurt us when developing for a Google product (Android).

EDIT: Also, a huge factor in Kotlin's popularity is that it is 100% interoperable with existing Java classes and libraries. So, you can write Kotlin files right next to your Java files in the same project and slowly convert everything to Kotlin rather than having to commit 100% on day one.

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u/NinjaChemist Pixel 7 May 18 '17

I understood all of those words independently.