Google promoted the Kotlin language as ‘Android development is Kotlin-first.’ The move was a great hit among Android engineers and developers. In a post, Google said, “Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first. Many new Jetpack APIs and features will be offered first in Kotlin. If you are starting a project, you should write it in Kotlin.” Since then, Kotlin has seen amazing growth as one of the most loved languages. About 50% of professional Android developers now prefer to use Kotlin. Read here about why Kotlin Android development makes a difference. Also, read the unique features of Kotlin 1.5.0 that give developers an edge.
Google Prioritizes Kotlin Android Development over Java
In a short period, Kotlin has become a famous language among developers for app development. Google announced Kotlin as its prime choice over Java on Android development for web apps. A professional Kotlin developer can easily master Go and Rust, Scala, and Swift languages.
Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language that supports small-sized subtyping with variance and polymorphism. The language also maintains lambda literal syntax and higher-order functions. It quickly helps compilation platforms, including Java Virtual Machine (JVM), JavaScript, and Native. Kotlin induces a big difference with its striking features like interoperability with Java, lazy-loading feature, collection filter, and data classes. Kotlin supports many mentioned-below tools and content. Google offers continuous support for using APIs from Java.
- Android Studio support
- AndroidX Kotlin-specific APIs (KTX, coroutines, etc.)
- AndroidX support
- API docs support
- Compiler plugin support
- Guided docs support
- Jetpack Compose
- Lint and multi-platform projects
- Online training and samples
- Platform SDK support
It is known that Java-compatible Kotlin has Google’s recognition as the official programming language for Android app development. Internal representation (IR) compiler and Java virtual machine (JVM) are the USP of the new release of Kotlin 1.5.0.
“The new compiler shares a unified pipeline and business logic with Kotlin/JS IR and Kotlin/Native compilers, which will allow us to implement most features, optimizations, and bug fixes for all platforms simultaneously. It will allow you to add custom processing and transformations that will automatically work on all platforms,” says Ekaterina Volodko from JetBrains. The new JVM IR compiler has been tried by more than 25k developers. It enables developers to build new language features for its different implementations, including
- Kotlin for JavaScript (Kotlin/JS) to build web applications
- Kotlin for JVM (Kotlin/JVM) for the Java platform
- Kotlin native (Kotlin/Native) to build apps for iOS and Windows
Kotlin 1.5.0 also fetches support for JVM records to safeguard interoperability with record classes. Record classes are the Java features that execute as transparent carriers for immutable data. Now, users can easily update Kotlin to 1.5.0 automatically with a notification alert. Developers will also find some improvements to the test library and standard library.
Kotlin/Native offers support for compiler caches in debug mode and deactivates the built-in memory leak checker. This deactivation process helps users avoid app crashing issues. “With compiler caches enabled, most debug compilations complete much faster, except for the first one. Measurements showed about a 200% speed increase on our test projects,” says JetBrains.
Read more: Kotlin 1.5.30 Unveiled with Language Features and Support Library Updates
Summing Up
Java developers will find Kotlin and its new features useful for web app development. When it comes to choosing the language, it is all about how comfortable developers are with Kotlin for accomplishing Android app development projects. A professional Kotlin Android development company can help you get a better Android app using Kotlin.
Google recommended Kotlin as the first choice for mobile app development to get better output than Java. App development company can use Kotlin as a ladder to climb up and get away from Java.
