Picking a programming language for a new software project can be a daunting task: there’s just so many choices!
So, why Kotlin? Why not Rust, Typescript, Go? I think this choice always comes down to the suitability of the programming language and language ecosystem to the types of software that you are writing.
Kotlin has a number of language features that make it an outstanding language for mobile application development, desktop and full-stack development:
- It’s flexible, in that you can build almost any type of application, for any platform. Critically, it supports compilation to a number of deployment targets: JVM for Windows/macOS/Linux on the desktop, Android native, or Web. With Compose Multiplatform, it can also be used to build iOS and Web apps.
- It’s a hybrid language: it can be used for declarative programming or class-based object-oriented programming. It also supports a number of functional features, especially with the use of collection classes.
- It has a very clean syntax, and supports quality-of-life features like default arguments, variable argument lists and rich collection types. It’s syntax closely resembles modern languages like Swift or Scala.
- Kotlin is statically compiled, so it catches many potential errors during compilation.
- It has extensive framework and library support from the community and industry partners.
- It has outstanding tools support with IntelliJ IDEA, and massive community support (libraries, toolkits).
Sources: StackOverflow Developer Survey 2022 and JetBrains The State of Developer Ecosystem 2022.
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