[driver733]

Sure, but you have take into account that Android devs are limited to Java 6, most enterprise devs (based on my experience) are still on Java 8 and some are still on Java 5 or below.

[vips7L]

Yeah this is nonsense and isn't an argument against the language. Embedded devs aren't allowed to use Rust, does that mean we shouldn't compare C++ 20 to Rust? Does that mean Rust is a bad language? If these said devs are limited to Java 6/7/8 does their company have the inertia to use a brand new programming language (Kotlin) that their devs don't know? Does this mean Kotlin is bad because they're not using it?

This is a bad argument.

[driver733]

My goal is to compare Kotlin with the current version of Java along with any Java libs that are commonly used (such as Lombok). I have mentioned the fact that some teams are still on older versions of Java just to highlight that not every developer can access the features of the latest Java release.

[vips7L]

Unless it's Android, if they can't access the latest features of Java they more than likely can't access the latest features of Kotlin either.

[driver733]

That's not always the case, since Kotlin can generate Java 6 compatible bytecode.

[outadoc]

You can compile Kotlin to target any of these JVMs, so of course it's relevant. If you're limited to using Java 6 every day, Kotlin is a game changer. If you can target Java 13, less so.

[_y5hn]

It's a bad case of jvm and lib dependencies and do reflect badly.

[hugi]

Then you should really name your article "My Arbitrary Choice of Java versions That I Believe People Use vs. Kotlin".

[Polyisoprene]

Java 9 was a huge roadblock for upgrading since a lot of libraries were using internal apis and that mess took a few years longer that it should have.

Now the only supported Java version is 11, so a lot of companies have moved to 11 the last year.

[chrisseaton]

Might as well call this a comparison of Kotlin and an arbitrary old version of Java then.