What is Kotlin? Key Concept Working and Advantages Scope & Career

Type inference seems to be improving with each release of Kotlin. Kotlin originated at JetBrains, the company behind IntelliJ IDEA, in 2010, and has been open source since 2012. The Kotlin project on GitHub has more than 770 contributors; while the majority of the team works at JetBrains, there have been nearly 100 external contributors to the Kotlin project. JetBrains uses Kotlin in many of its products including its flagship IntelliJ IDEA. Partner relationship management is a combination of the software, processes and strategies companies use to streamline …

  • Programming can feel like a daunting subject to learn about, but it doesn’t have…
  • This is one feature of Kotlin that Java veterans will appreciate.
  • Pinterest was the poster child for Android apps written in Kotlin as early as November 2016, and it was mentioned prominently at Google I/O 2017 as part of the Kotlin announcement.
  • It can be used to develop Android apps, server-side apps and much more.
  • Kotlin works on different platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi, etc.) and it’s 100% compatible with Java.

Kotlin is a statically-typed language, so it is very easy to read and write. Kotlin allows users to create an extension function, while Java doesn’t offer any extension functions. As mentioned, Kotlin is less verbose than Java so code is easier to maintain. In regards to learning difficulty, Kotlin may be on the same level as Java. Unless you already have experience with Java, Kotlin will be just as difficult to learn, which isn’t too difficult at all.

Android development

Sharing code between JVM and JavaScript platforms feature was newly added to this release (multiplatform programming is by now a beta feature upgraded from “experimental”). A full-stack demo has been made with the new Kotlin/JS Gradle Plugin. In July 2011, JetBrains unveiled Project Kotlin, a new language for the JVM, which had been under development for a year. JetBrains lead Dmitry Jemerov said that most languages did not have the features they were looking for, with the exception of Scala.

What is Kotlin

To be sure, there will likely be no shortage for Kotlin developers in any other area of development. Given that Kotlin is based on Java, some Kotlin developers may have transitioned from being Java developers or may have decided to add Kotlin to their repertoire. Due to less code and enhanced readability, the errors also will be a few only.

Why Do We Need Kotlin?

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 was designed as a replacement for Java on the Android operating system. Eight years after it was released, in 2019, Google finally agreed with Jemerov and most Android developers and announced that Kotlin was the preferred language for Android app development. Kotlin was built by software development tool creators JetBrains in 2010.

It’s more lightweight, cleaner and more concise than Java, particularly when it comes to writing data classes and callbacks. Like a spiced-up Java, Kotlin is designed to hit the same notes as the classic programming language, while addressing all the flaws and limitations that make it unsuitable for the future. At a time when productivity is becoming increasingly important to innovators the world over, Kotlin takes the coding experience to a new place.

How much do developers cost in South America?

To learn more, tell us about your project and we’ll get you started. Eastern Europe shares very similar rates to South America, again due to the economic differences. When looking at salaries in Eastern Europe, data shows that a Senior Kotlin Developer costs around $100,000 on average. The average Kotlin developer in the United States makes $127,541 a year, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Salaries can range as high as $170,000 and as low as $49,000.

Namespace declaration − Kotlin allows developers to declare the functions at the top level. However, whenever the same function is declared in many places of your application, then it is hard to understand which function is being called. This tutorial has been prepared for the beginners to help them understand the basics of Kotlin programming language. After completing this tutorial, you will find yourself at a moderate level of expertise in Kotlin, from where you can take yourself to the next levels. Probably the only aspect wherein Java is superior to Kotlin is when it comes to clean builds.

Top Tutorials

Learning Kotlin can aid you in knowing more about language design and show you some gaps in Java. Kotlin is very high in demand and all major companies are moving towards Kotlin to develop their web and mobile applications. This is aided by several language features such as nullable types and by nudging you towards best practices such as designing for inheritance. Kotlin is easier to understand than Java, which makes code easier to read and comprehend. An immutable object is one whose state is unchangeable after it’s been declared. In Kotlin, immutable variables are declared as val, whereas mutable variables are declared as var.

What is Kotlin

Meanwhile, Groovy provides a concise and efficient way of handling variable nullability. That said, Scala and Groovy both take a long time to compile so Jemerov wanted a new language that had all the benefits of Scala and Groovy but compiled as fast as Java. For almost anyone doing Android development, the advantages of Kotlin are compelling. The typical rough estimate https://globalcloudteam.com/ indicates approximately a 40% cut in the number of lines of code from Java to Kotlin. Kotlin reduces most Java boilerplate code by combining object-oriented and functional code into one thus its lightweight nature. Kotlin is a programming language that was released in 2011 by JetBrains, a company that sells integrated development environments for programming languages.

Prerequisites to Learn Kotlin

Speaking of avoiding common errors, Kotlin was designed to eliminate the danger of null pointer references and streamline the handling of null values. It does this by making a null illegal for standard types, adding nullable types, and implementing shortcut notations to handle tests for null. At least one of the datapoints how to hire a kotlin developer contained must be a parameter. An Android developer might choose Java over Kotlin if they are new to Android software development. Historically, most examples of Android documentation are in Java. A new developer combing through these might find it easier to engage with them in Java rather than converting to Kotlin.