What is Kotlin ?
Kotlin is a modern programming language that compiles to Java bytecode. It is free and open source, and promises to make coding for Android even more fun.
Kotlin was created by JetBrains, the company behind IntelliJ IDEA (Android Studio is based on IntelliJ IDEA). Since Google announced official support for Kotlin development on Android at Google I/O 2017, it has rapidly become the third-most loved language in the world, according to Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey.
Kotlin runs on the JVM, but also compiles to JavaScript or native code (via LLVM). It’s a functional and object-oriented language.
It rose to popularity in 2016 when Google announced Kotlin as an officially supported language for Android development.
What is Kotlin used for?
The Kotlin programming language is a modern, statically-typed, general-purpose language. It runs on Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and compiles to JavaScript or native code. It's open source and has great community support, which makes it easy to learn and use. It's been around for almost ten years, but in the past couple of years has gained a lot of popularity due to its many benefits over other languages such as Java. Here are some reasons why Kotlin is gaining so much popularity:
1) Compatibility with Java - As Kotlin compiles down to Java bytecode, it can be used anywhere that Java is used. This means you can use Kotlin in both your frontend and backend codebases without any performance hits or compatibility issues.
2) Powerful Type System - Kotlin's type system is very powerful, which allows programmers to define types that are more specific than those provided by the JVM. This means that your code will have fewer bugs because there won't be any unexpected runtime errors due to mismatched types.
3) Null Safety - Null safety is one of Kotlin's most powerful features because it prevents null pointer exceptions from happening at runtime by ensuring that all variables cannot be null unless explicitly declared so using.
Is Kotlin better than Java?
Is Kotlin better than Java? It is a common question that comes up when you get to know about Kotlin. Developers are trying this new language in the hope that it makes their life easier.
Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language that runs on the Java virtual machine and also can be compiled to JavaScript source code or use the LLVM compiler infrastructure. Its primary development is from a team of JetBrains programmers based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. While the syntax is not compatible with Java, the JVM implementation of the Kotlin standard library is designed to interoperate with Java code and is reliant on Java code from the existing Java Class Library, such as the collections framework.
Kotlin was named Language of the Year for 2016 by Programming Language of the Year Awards, and in 2017 by TIOBE Programming Community Index.