Introduction to Kotlin for Complete Beginner

In 2011 Jetbrains announced that now developers can use their newly invented language called kotlin to develop android apps. Like the same way we could do with java.

And then six years later we got another announcement related to kotlin and this time the announcement was from Google itself. In 2017 Google announced that now kotlin is the official supported language to develop android apps.

At the same time Oracle, the company behind java which is also the most popular language among android developers. Decided to make Java paid. Which lasts for no longer.

But this news also changed developers minds and to jumping from Java to Kotlin. Not just that for the better improvement of the kotlin language Google is heavily sponsoring this project along with Jetbrains.

So this is a fix that kotlin has a very secure future. And because of that you can see nowadays from the companies who are just starting out to the giant corporations like Amazon, Netflix and Google that use Kotlin to build their applications.

Why Kotlin?

So, let’s try to understand why to use kotlin and why the need for a new language arose.

Even though Kotlin uses the same JVM technology to run its code (for android). Which is used by Java. Why are developers choosing Kotlin on the top of Java? Which is 16 years older language and used for all purpose projects for decades.

According to the creator of the language. That is because Java has been missing some advanced features which modern languages offer nowadays.

Kotlin multiplatform

No doubt Java is good but when it comes to advancement kotlin is the best. Not just that, Kotlin can be compiled down to work with three different environments as of the time I am writing this post.

Kotlin can be compiled down to JVM, x64 native code and also to JavaScript. Because of that nowadays Jetbrains is investing heavily to promote Kotlin multiplatform.

Means like JavaScript Kotlin can be used to build native apps, web apps and building backend servers for those apps.

Even though kotlin is a multiplatform language at the time I am writing this post. Most people don’t know about this. Among all, Kotlin/JVM is the most used and popular language in the developer community.