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by thomascgalvin 1631 days ago
> Kotlin is OK but isn't sufficiently better than Java to be worth using when any Kotlin dev is going to have to know Java and Java-Kotlin mapping pretty well to use libraries.

One of the big benefits of Kotlin is that if you know Java, you pretty much already know Kotlin, too. A good Java dev can get spun up on the basics in a day or two.

> Both Scala and Kotlin are sufficiently similiar to Java to provide no real benefit.

Kotlin provides a ton of ergonomic features that I absolutely adore. Named parameters and default parameter values alone save me tens or hundreds of lines of code.

I think of Kotlin as what would happen if a Java developer looked at Javascript and asked "okay, but what if this didn't suck?"

3 comments

> I think of Kotlin as what would happen if a Java developer looked at Javascript and asked "okay, but what if this didn't suck?"

I think you mean "what if we took C# and put it on the JVM"? /s

Honestly, C# has had most of the features Kotlin "adds on" to Java for years, even decades.

Kotlin's future is tied to Android, on the JVM I don't even care it exists.
How so? While yes Android is one of the most common uses at the moment for Kotlin (thanks to Google making it a first class supported language for the platform) it is still dependent on the JVM, thus can do anything that Java Can.
You can’t beat Javascript for ergonomic passing conventions and packing and unpacking of lists and dicts.