Kotlin Tutorial

What is kotlin?

Kotlin is a statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference. It is widely used to develop Android applications. Kotlin is designed to interoperate fully with Java, and the JVM version of its standard library depends on the Java Class Library, but type inference allows its syntax to be more concise. Kotlin mainly targets the JVM but also compiles to JavaScript or native code. Kotlin is sponsored by JetBrains and Google, through the Kotlin Foundation.

The necessity to Learn Kotlin

The main reasons to learn Kotlin are:

• The demand for Kotlin experience is high.

A survey said that 2018 would be the year of Kotlin. This study says that twenty percent of the applications that were built using java before 2017 is now built using Kotlin. This has increased the demand for developers having Kotlin skills by the companies.

• The projects can be developed faster using Kotlin.

The number of lines of code when programming is done in Kotlin is very less when compared to programming in other programming languages. Many development programs with only a few lines of code can be developed using Kotlin and it is a concise language.

• The quality of the applications built using Koltin is very good.

Kotlin language consists of safety features that can reduce the bugs and number of failures. Hence the quality of the developed applications is improved.

• Existing java libraries make use of Kotlin.

Kotlin and java can be used together in a project and java code can be rewritten in Kotlin and Kotlin code can be rewritten in Java efficiently, i.e. Kotlin and Java are interoperable. There is no need to stop using java, both Java and Kotlin can be used together.

• Kotlin is the official language supported by Google for Android development.

Kotlin was declared as an official language for android development by Google in 2017. The object-oriented programming features and functional features are combined into a unique platform in Kotlin and it is an open-source programming language.

Applications of Kotlin

The applications of Kotlin are:

• Kotlin can be compiled on Java Virtual Machine and it can be made available wherever java is used today. Kotlin can be particularly used on the backend.
• JavaScript can be compiled using Kotlin making it available for the frontend.
• The design of Kotlin can be used for web development and server-side development.
• People are also talking about using Kotlin for Data Science instead of Scala, python, etc.

Pre-requisites to Learn Kotlin

The prerequisites to learn Kotlin is a basic foundation of programming language and object-oriented concepts and prior experience in an object-oriented language like C++.