Kotlin : Android App Development Choice

Kotlin is a general-purpose open-source programming language. It runs on the JVM and its syntax is much like Java. We can use any Java IDE to run it. It can be used to develop Android apps, server-side apps and much more. It is a high level strongly statically typed language and its code is more concise, readable and easy to understand. Its popularity grown day by day. In 2017, Android team announced Kotlin as an official language for Android app development. After this announcement a large number of Android users began adopting it.

History of Kotlin

Kotlin was developed by JetBrains team. A project was started in 2010 to develop the language and officially, first released in February 2016. Kotlin was developed under the Apache 2.0 license.


Features of Kotlin

  • Kotlin is open source statically typed programming language.
  • Kotlin is a functional language. There is no need to write lots of code using it.
  • As it is very concise, so it is very easy to read and understand the code pattern.
  • In very short period of time, it can give better performance.
  • It is interoperable and null safety language, it eliminates the NullPointerException.
  • It provides the ability to target JavaScript, as it transpiles to JavaScript.
  • Kotlin is compatible with all the java based framework.
  • For the Java developers, it is very easy to start with Kotlin.
  • It supports scalability to expand the application for massive number of users.

 

Supporting Platforms

Kotlin supports well on the following platforms –

  • Android
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • iOS
  • MacOS
  • WebAssembly

Kotlin Compiler

It first compiles the code into byte code and after that it runs on the JVM similar to the Java language.


Set up working environment

As, it run on JVM, so download and install the latest JDK.

It can run on any IDE that support Java, like Eclipse, Netbeans, Intellij.

Kotlin Popularity

Kotlin becomes the second most-beloved programming language among developers according to Stack Overflow survey. It has not only adopted by the expert developers but also students want to learn. It’s growth doubled each year from 2011 to 2018 and according to the survey this language is generally used for Android app development. Even, many developers have migrated from Java code to Kotlin.

Top Users

Many top software giants like Pinterest, Netflix, Uber, Trello, Corda, Slack etc. are using Kotlin to create applications.