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by winter_blue 2527 days ago
Wow, this is really encouraging. I was debating whether to use Rust or Kotlin for developing a new programming language, and after reading your comment, I'm leaning a little bit closer to Rust. I had previously broken down the pros for Kotlin to 6 points:

1. You get access to all of the JVM libraries.

2. You don't have to work within the confines of the borrow checker.

3. Kotlin “Common” targets 3 platforms: LLVM, JVM, and JS (whereas, Rust only targets LLVM).

4. Kotlin is probably a more terse language, and suitable for doing algorithm / problem-solving interviews, and therefore a good one to be fluent in.

5. Kotlin's greater industry traction means that it might be more useful professionally. Outside of Android, I've also heard of servers/back-ends being written in Kotlin.

6. ANTLR is well-documented, compared to LALRPOP (the best existing Rust parser generator), and ANTLR targets/generates code for several mainstream languages (versus only Rust with LALRPOP). ANTLR is also probably a more useful skill to have for future jobs/projects.

But despite of all the pluses of using Kotlin, I'm still leaning a bit closer to Rust, because of all the good things I'm hearing about it.