[hhariri]

With the disclaimer out the way that I work for JetBrains, we are using it internally for several projects and some parts of our tools, including for instance the LiveEdit functionality in WebStorm is written in Kotlin. In terms of comparing to Java, yes Java 8 adds lambdas but Kotlin drastically reduces the amount of code required and adds several other features that are not in 8.

[microtonal]

I certainly think there is a place for a language that does not have the complexity of Scala, but reduces the boilerplate of Java. I also liked the support of non-null types in Kotlin.

[MichaelAza]

I was wondering what niche this filled and now that you say it, yes, this does seem like a nice compromise between Java and Scala (The F# of the JVM?)

In general, these "traditional OOP with functional flare" languages are a very positive trend with functional idioms becoming much more mainstream.

"FP for the masses" is certainly going places.

[hhariri]

And also has extension methods and lambda extensions which AFAIK are unique to Kotlin (the latter), which makes some of the stuff I do with Wasabi possible.