[bad_user]

Kotlin is just a Java++, akin to what CoffeeScript is to JS, a Java with a different syntax.

Scala is not just a Java with a different syntax. Because of how traits work and because of how they were encoded in Java's class format, in older Scala versions even adding a method with a default implementation breaks binary compatibility, which is why the history of Scala has been so fraught with compatibility breakage.

Scala 2.12 takes advantage of Java 8's new default methods in interfaces, among others, for encoding Scala's features. We finally have a Scala version that isn't so fragile. And because of the limited resources of the core team, they can't maintain different backends.

Java 8 was released in 2014. I cheered for Google when they won Oracle's lawsuit, but when you're forking the ecosystem, you have a responsibility to keep on your promise of keeping up to date and compatible with the upstream. They just pulled a Microsoft and are getting away with it.

Fuck Google for fracturing the Java ecosystem. There, I said it.

[cel1ne]

Kotlin is not CoffeeScript for Java.

Kotlin is Java done much better. Null as syntax, extensions with receivers, reified typing, type-safe builders, first-class lambdas, sealed classes, co-routines and so much more...

Kotlin is my language of choice for just about everything at the moment.

I have done 15+ years of programming in Java (Desktop, Server, Android), JavaScript (ES5, ES6+), Kotlin and a little programming in Coffee-script. Your comparison is just wrong.

It's 100% compatible to Java so of course it's not a completely different language. Haskell is a different language. I like Haskell, but I'm glad that I don't have to convert all my old java code to it.

I can open old java-projects and use Kotlin on a file-by-file basis without any problems.

[lmm]

If Kotlin wasn't just CoffeScript for Java but a whole new language then there would be no reason to use it instead of Scala. There's an excluded middle here: either it's a very-close-to-Java language (in which case probably not worth the cost of using) or it's a language that's significantly different from Java (in which case it has no interop/familiarity advantage over Scala and the two languages have to be compared on their merits - and I'd say Kotlin comes off pretty poorly in that).

> It's 100% compatible to Java so of course it's not a completely different language. Haskell is a different language. I like Haskell, but I'm glad that I don't have to convert all my old java code to it.

> I can open old java-projects and use Kotlin on a file-by-file basis without any problems.

Sure. I do exactly that in Scala too.

[Larrikin]

One of the arguments against Scala is that its large and simply too feature rich. https://agilewombat.com/2016/02/01/scala-vs-kotlin/

[lmm]

The parts it does add are small and orthogonal. They can be combined to make surprising things, but that's the mark of a good language - it lets people write very complex libraries, but by combining simple features in ways that make sense.

Specifically, call by name is highlighted in the IDE these days (though I agree we would be better off without it), implicit parameters are really important and it's not hard to ensure consistency, for comprehension is the opposite of what that site is saying (dealing with multiple monads is a lot harder without it, and it's not like ignoring monads as Kotlin does makes the problems you need monads for go away), and the rule about operators is incredibly simple (your method name is just your method name, if you want to write a "" operator you call it "" rather than having to remember what the magic name for overloading that is).

Meanwhile your link ignores the many complex features in Kotlin e.g. delegation, platform types. Maybe they were added since it was written - Kotlin seems to add a lot of ad-hoc features very quickly.

[pkolaczk]

Kotlin doesn't really have true reified generics (any more than e.g. Scala has), Java 8 has first class lambdas, extension methods and @Nullable now. Kotlin is just Java 8 with cleaner syntax.

[ptx]

I'm no expert on Java 8, but it looks like the new feature they call "extension methods" is just the ability to define methods in interfaces and inherit them, essentially like a concrete method in an abstract base class, isn't it?

The "extension methods" in Kotlin (and C#) is a completely different feature: syntactic sugar for static utility methods, which allow you to add new methods to any class without needing to modify the original class. (Or at least make it look that way syntactically.)

So in Kotlin you can do this:

  fun String.toLeetSpeak(): String {
     val charmap = mapOf('e' to '3', 'l' to '1')
     return this.map { charmap[it] ?: it }.joinToString(separator="")
  }

  fun main(args: Array<String>) {
      println("Hello!".toLeetSpeak())
  }

...whereas in Java you would have to change (and have access to) the implementation of one of the classes or interfaces that String inherits from.

[cel1ne]

Also in Kotlin you can have extension methods with multiple receivers:

    class Dictionary {
       val wordList = setOf<String>()

       fun String.isWord(word): Boolean = 
          word in wordList
    }

    ...

    val myDictionary = Dictionary()
    
    with (Dictionary) {
        println("dog".isWord)
    }

    (you can skip the "with" when being inside Dictionary)

[bad_user]

> ...whereas in Java you would have to change (and have access to) the implementation of one of the classes or interfaces that String inherits from.

Or, you know, just define a plain function.

> which allow you to add new methods to any class without needing to modify the original class

No, those aren't methods, because they don't do dynamic dispatch. This is actually a problem in case you have an inheritance hierarchy and you want different behavior for a ChildClass extending a BaseClass.

Speaking of Scala, it's the only one out of the ones mentioned here that can do that based on the compile-time time, by letting you define the same extension for both ChildClass and BaseClass, but with different priorities, such that the compiler can disambiguate.

[ptx]

> Or, you know, just define a plain function.

My comment was about extension methods and how the name refers to different features in Java and Kotlin, so I meant "...whereas in Java [if you wanted to use the Java feature to do the same thing the Kotlin feature by the same name does] you would have to ...".

> those aren't methods

I know, they're only sugar for static methods, as I said.

[bad_user]

Right, and I was pointing out that your comment doesn't make much sense.

[dep_b]

The @Nullable syntax is akin to putting a band-aid on a rotting leg. You cannot fix Java without breaking compatibility with older code. They only way to see it is not to look at the problem from the inside out when you have been surrounded with Java for perhaps decades in your career.

In my code null-pointer exceptions or similar accidents (force unwrapping something that simply doesn't exist) never happens anymore. Not in my libraries and not in my program code. A whole class of bugs just gone. Simply because I have to prove that something exists before I use it at compile time already.

It's like having security that starts with everything turned OFF for a default user instead of ON.

[cel1ne]

Kotlin has generics that are in most circumstances reified enough ;).

Optionals of Java8 and Guava are a terrible idea. @Nullable is just an annotation. Null-safety built in the language is the only way to go.

You could always argue that a language is just cleaner syntax. Kotlin is a cleaner syntax for interacting with JVM-bytecode. Scala is a also cleaner syntax for interacting with JVM-bytecode. JVM-Bytecode is a cleaner syntax for interacting with operating systems.

[lmm]

Optional is a concept that you need even in a null-safe language (e.g. Haskell has Maybe). With language-level nullability you can sort-of emulate a pseudo-Optional type, but why would you want to? It's inherently second-class because it can't ever be properly compositional (Option[A] is always a different type from A and can be understood without knowing anything about A, whereas A? might or might not be a different type from A, you can't understand what it does without knowing the details of what A is).

Once you start interacting with JVM bytecode Kotlin ceases to have null-safety. @Nullable is just an annotation but at least you can write it down, unlike Kotlin's "platform types". Conversely if you're not interacting with non-Scala bytecode then Scala is null-safe in practice if not in theory, because the Scala ecosystem doesn't use null and has tools to enforce this.

[cel1ne]

I think it most real code you're better off without the Optional monad.

A variable being null is not a condition you can always a have a name for. You want to use it sometimes, but not built your entire vocabulary around it.

You also don't usually want to pass wrapped nulls around, you just want nulls available in local state.

[lmm]

> You want to use it sometimes, but not built your entire vocabulary around it.

Sure, which is why it should be an ordinary library type written in the language (and operated on with normal methods), not a magic special type with direct compiler support and custom operators.

> A variable being null is not a condition you can always a have a name for. You want to use it sometimes, but not built your entire vocabulary around it.

> You also don't usually want to pass wrapped nulls around, you just want nulls available in local state.

Why are you thinking in terms of "null" and "wrapping"? Think in terms of the business condition you want to represent. Often you have the possibility of some value being not-set or unknown in your data model - this comes up often enough that it's worth having a standard library type to represent it. "A variable being null" is not something that happens a priori, it's just an unfortunate representation certain languages adopt.

[pkolaczk]

> Kotlin has generics that are in most circumstances reified enough ;).

They are not more reified than what you can achieve by just putting Class<T> fields in Java objects to represent the runtime type of the generic type parameter. Sure, Java solution is kinda more verbose and ugly, but this is basically what people already said here: Kotlin has some nice syntax sugar.

But you still can't have two different methods differing only with the generic type parameter (e.g. List<String> and List<Integer>). And the code is still not-specialized properly, read "slow".

Real reification will be possible if project Valhalla arrives (maybe Java 10, who knows?)

[pjmlp]

> Fuck Google for fracturing the Java ecosystem. There, I said it.

Right on the spot, yet as Silicon Valley darling they get a free pass instead of being blamed like Microsoft was.

I still hope Oracle manages to force them to play by rules.

Other JVM vendors like IBM, Atego, Azul, MicroEJ,.... are able to provide their own extensions, while supporting Java properly and not forking the whole language + standard libraries.

Some of them do sell JVMs for embedded devices with soft and real-time constraints much higher than Android, so the whole story about a Java fork being a requirement for Android is such Google marketing for their actions.

[dep_b]

> Kotlin is just a Java++, akin to what CoffeeScript is to JS, a Java with a different syntax.

Kotlin is a smaller language than Java (just based on my feeling actually) yet more safe and in many regards flexible. Kotlin is more similar to Swift, where Swift is aimed at Cocoa and Kotlin at the JVM.

The only thing it really has in common is that it uses the JVM. But F# is not similar to C# just because it has .Net compatibility. Especially if you try to write C# in F# instead of F# according to the gospel.

Just as I've seen tons of code by Objective-C devs that's just the old code translated to the new code a lot of Java devs probably won't really get Kotlin and will write the same code as they would do in Java.