[bartread]

It's impressive to see Kotlin finally getting some traction. The first time I heard of it was years ago: I was doing a piece of competitor analysis at Red Gate and I clearly remember reading about it and having a distinctly "whatever" reaction.

Part of that was because every time I'd seen some (relatively) small shop invent a language or platform in the past, it sort of sucked. But JetBrains are a rather different animal. They've done a great job of getting the right kind of people on board, with the right background and experience, to do language design well. They also have a talent for making long-term plays and consistently investing in them; they're patient about achieving long-term success (examples: IntelliJ, TeamCity, even YouTrack), which isn't so common. I probably shouldn't be surprised to see the same happening with Kotlin - they've been plugging away at it for about 6 years, I think. Great work.