Why Android Developers are switching to Kotlin

When we talk, or the discussion is about Android app development, the first of the major programming language that comes to developer's minds is ‘ Java’. However, Java isn’t the only language you can use or is suitable for Android programming — you are free to use any language that compiles to the JVM. Recently, a new language has been into the limelight and has caught the attention of the Android community — Kotlin.

Kotlin has been developed and actually been around since 2011, but it was only in May 2017 that Google announced that the language was to become an officially supported language in the Android operating system. This is one of the many as well as the major reasons why Kotlin’s adoption has been so dramatic. The Realm report, that was published at the year's end of 2017 has made some suggestions. It suggests that Kotlin is likely to overtake Java in terms of usage in the next couple of years.

When you as a developer, want to work on custom Android applications, advanced technology will help you achieve your goals. Java as well as its younger brother, Kotlin has commonly used languages for Google for writing Android Apps. Great importance has been provided to programming languages because it has the ability in order to cut down some of your time and money.

There are many reasons why mobile developers and programmers are choosing to switch from Java to Kotlin. Below are some of the most significant.

Kotlin is easy to learn for anyone familiar with Java

Similarities in typing as well as syntax make Kotlin very easy to master for anyone who’s already working with Java. If you’re worried about a deep or a steep learning curve, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is for emerging as well as experienced developers to dive into coding in Kotlin. Kotlin has proven to be and has been evolving with a lot of support from the developer community. A lot of developers and programmers who contribute to Kotlin’s evolution are freelancers who find work on different platforms and experience a wide range of smaller projects with varied needs. Other contributors include larger companies and SMEs as well as industry giants like Google.

Kotlin needs 30 percent less coding when you write the same application in Kotlin compared to Java. Java has now been a bit outdated, which means every new launch has to support features included in the previous version. This eventually leads to an increase in the code to write, resulting in absence of layer-to-layer architecture. If you compare the coding done using Java class and Kotlin class, you will find that the one written in Kotlin will be much more compact as well as readable than the one written in Java.

Kotlin has Android Studio support

Because Kotlin is built as well as developed by JetBrains, it’s unsurprising that Android Studio (also a JetBrains product) has excellent support for Kotlin. Android Studio makes it incredibly easy as well as favorable to developers for configuring Ko or development toolkit will have no problem understanding as well as compiling and running Kotlin code once you have set up and configured Kotlin to be used for Android Studio. After configuring and setting up Kotlin for Android Studio, you can convert the entire Java source file into a Kotlin file.

The fact that Kotlin has been designed to be Java compatible thus making it a uniquely useful language that can leverage JVMs. While at the same time, Kotlin is used to update and improve enterprise-level solutions that have enormous codebases written in Java.

Kotlin is great for procedural programming

Every programming language as well as the paradigm has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. There will always be certain scenarios and situations that come across where one is more effective than another. One thing that’s so appealing about Kotlin is that it combines the strengths of two different approaches to development and programming — procedural and functional.

True, the largely procedural approach can prove to sometimes be the most challenging aspect of the language when you first start to learn and get to grips with it. However, the level of control such an approach can give you is well worth the investment of your time.

Kotlin makes development to be highly efficient and your life easier

This follows on nicely from the discussed points above. While there are certain aspects of Kotlin which require patience as well as concentration to master, in the long run, with lesser code, errors as well as bugs will be greatly reduced. That saves you developers time, thus making coding much more enjoyable and efficient rather than an administrative nightmare of spaghetti code.

There are plenty of features that are present in Kotlin that makes it a practical solution to today’s programming challenges. Where JetBrains has been able to take the language next remains to be seen. We could, perhaps, see Kotlin move to iOS development, and if it compiled to JavaScript we may also begin to see it used more and more within web development. Of course, this will boil down to largely JetBrain’s goals regarding the future of Kotlin and just how much they want Kotlin to dominate the developer landscape.