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Why Kotlin? 8 features That Will Convince You To Switch
Officially released in 2016, Kotlin has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, especially since Google announced its support for Kotlin as an alternative to Java on Android platforms. With the -previously- announced the decision to make Kotlin the preferred language for Android, you may be wondering if it’s time to start learning a new programming language.
Kotlin’s release history
Kotlin was announced in 2011, but the first stable release, version 1.0, didn’t appear until 2016. The language is free and open-source, developed by JetBrains with Andrey Breslav serving as its lead language designer.
About Kotlin
Kotlin is a modern, statically-typed programming language that features both object-oriented and functional programming constructs. It targets several platforms, including the JVM, and is fully interoperable with Java. In many ways, Kotlin is what Java might look like if it were designed today. In this article, I will introduce eight features of Kotlin that I believe Java developers will be excited to discover.
- Clean, compact syntax
- Single type system (almost)
- Null safety
- Functions and functional programming
