[usrusr]

It's funny actually: my java code had mostly made peace with null. A combination of tireless performance of that if-dance where necessary, generous use of static methods for certain routine tasks on nullables and most importantly, @NonNull and null object singletons creeping into more and more code.

Now in kotlin it feels like it's just "drown it in question marks". I certainly end up with lots of nonnull signatures and far more reliable null handling than in java, but the ease almost feels wrong.

[wombat-man]

I am using more and more kotlin these days as an Android app dev

it starts that way, but over time you don't need the question marks as much because you're dealing with more and more code where the variables are guaranteed to not be null.

[usrusr]

Where my code is mostly interacting with itself I see question marks almost as rarely as I saw Optional during my scala adventures (still can't believe a decade went by!), but the android API provokes it's share of nullability and the kotlin approach to deal with it is just so "why didn't we have that back in the MIDlet days!"

Some coworkers seem to type questionmarks faster than that IntelliJ "convert to kotlin" button and I hate it, but much less than I'd expect.

[bobthepanda]

There’s also Java Optionals for wrapping everything into a tidy package. Optional.ofNullable is very neat.

Question marks are basically more concise Optional chaining.