5 ms·

kotlin is backed by a tooling company. This is a very strong argument. The ones that are doing the best IDE for java (for a lot of people) are the ones that dec

by jorgemf 10y ago

kotlin is backed by a tooling company. This is a very strong argument. The ones that are doing the best IDE for java (for a lot of people) are the ones that decided to create kotlin. Swift also has the tooling support of Apple, but I only read complains about tooling around Swift. Go and Rust are very niche compare to java or swift, while kotlin can replace java completely and now it is aiming for native backend projects.

Entangled 10y ago
This is a great point and I wonder if JetBrains released a free IDE for individual programmers it would help adopt their technologies wherever these programmers work. Yesterday I took a look at their tools and they are all absolutely great but I didn't download a single one since they are all 30-day trial and I am as poor as fuck. So tease me, convert me, let me use your tools for years and when the time comes I am ready for an enterprise I'd take my knowledge with me, and my tools. JetBrains are you listening?
- danneu 10y ago
  Check out their open source license. https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/ https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/
- drampelt 10y ago
  Intellij IDEA has a free community edition, but yeah, nothing free for commericial development. https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/ https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/
  - adl 10y ago
    Depends on how you define commercial development. You can certainly do commercial applications using Intellij IDEA CE, if you don't need Java EE, Spring, GWT, Grails, etc deep integration in the IDE.
  - true_religion 10y ago
    It is important to note that they don't prohibit commercial development on the community edition. They just do not promote the community edition for commercial development. I, for instance, could choose to use PyCharm community since I rarely use any of the tooling that comes with the 'pro edition', but when I do need something---like Cython debugging---its damned useful.
- nanodeath 10y ago
  Community version of IntelliJ works just fine for Kotlin development.
- adl 10y ago
  IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is free(cero cost) and Open Source. I believe it includes Kotlin Support. https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/#chooseYourEdition https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/#chooseYourEdition
saosebastiao 10y ago
I'm skeptical of the strategic advantage of being backed by a tooling company, because of the fact that tooling is often a preference that comes with holy wars attached. If Emacs sponsored a language, how many Vim users would jump ship? I know plenty of Java devs that actually prefer Eclipse (WTF?!?!?). Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Throw in the fact that their IDE software is open source only until you need the most advanced features, and I can imagine Kotlin never picking up as much steam as Rust or Swift with their comparably inferior tooling ecosystems. I can imagine C# taking over java before Kotlin does.
- geodel 10y ago
  Absolutely. I think Kotlin might settle in a specific Java platform tooling category where a bunch of code in Java can be concisely expressed in Kotlin. With Scala being more than a decade old, its most popular usage is Apache Spark project which is not saying much. Kotlin would first have to reach beyond Scala which itself is small percentage point of Java.
- true_religion 10y ago
  > Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Many companies mandate that you use Visual Studio to develop with because their entire toolchain is setup to build the project via VS tools. Deviating from that means that no one can help you, and you're probably polluting the repo with your own ad-hoc tooling.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Actually that is how many enterprise companies work. I usually get to use what the IT department from our customers has decided as IDE for a specific project. Anything else usually requires a change request with the necessary approvals at all levels, which means very few people ever bother to go through that pain, assuming that it will be approved in the end, because "I don't like X" won't work as reason.
  - coldtea 10y ago
geodel 10y ago
> while kotlin can replace java completely I am not sure it can be be concluded from any data. They have come up with just a tech preview. Doing better job than Rust/Swift/Java or Go to have high perf on native platforms is going to be a huge effort. Just having a binding via LLVM is a small start. Hope they do better but for now it seems to me that hype around it is about 2-3 magnitudes higher than the actual amount of software written in it.
- jorgemf 10y ago
  kotlin can replace java completely because it compiles to bytecode (as java does). And then it is the bytecode what is compiled/interpreted in the JVM. The tech preview is about kotlin compiling directly to machine code. They already said they haven't done any optimization into that code. I guess they use some intermediate language for the compiler to translate it to machine code. (note that all the compilers translate the original input file into this intermediate language before compiling it to the final code, so they can do a lot of optimization and checks in this code which are shared among all languages)

by jorgemf 10y ago

Entangled 10y ago

This is a great point and I wonder if JetBrains released a free IDE for individual programmers it would help adopt their technologies wherever these programmers work. Yesterday I took a look at their tools and they are all absolutely great but I didn't download a single one since they are all 30-day trial and I am as poor as fuck. So tease me, convert me, let me use your tools for years and when the time comes I am ready for an enterprise I'd take my knowledge with me, and my tools. JetBrains are you listening?

danneu 10y ago
Check out their open source license. https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/ https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/
drampelt 10y ago
Intellij IDEA has a free community edition, but yeah, nothing free for commericial development. https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/ https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/
- adl 10y ago
  Depends on how you define commercial development. You can certainly do commercial applications using Intellij IDEA CE, if you don't need Java EE, Spring, GWT, Grails, etc deep integration in the IDE.
- true_religion 10y ago
  It is important to note that they don't prohibit commercial development on the community edition. They just do not promote the community edition for commercial development. I, for instance, could choose to use PyCharm community since I rarely use any of the tooling that comes with the 'pro edition', but when I do need something---like Cython debugging---its damned useful.
nanodeath 10y ago
Community version of IntelliJ works just fine for Kotlin development.
adl 10y ago
IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is free(cero cost) and Open Source. I believe it includes Kotlin Support. https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/#chooseYourEdition https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/#chooseYourEdition

saosebastiao 10y ago

I'm skeptical of the strategic advantage of being backed by a tooling company, because of the fact that tooling is often a preference that comes with holy wars attached. If Emacs sponsored a language, how many Vim users would jump ship? I know plenty of Java devs that actually prefer Eclipse (WTF?!?!?). Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Throw in the fact that their IDE software is open source only until you need the most advanced features, and I can imagine Kotlin never picking up as much steam as Rust or Swift with their comparably inferior tooling ecosystems. I can imagine C# taking over java before Kotlin does.

geodel 10y ago
Absolutely. I think Kotlin might settle in a specific Java platform tooling category where a bunch of code in Java can be concisely expressed in Kotlin. With Scala being more than a decade old, its most popular usage is Apache Spark project which is not saying much. Kotlin would first have to reach beyond Scala which itself is small percentage point of Java.
true_religion 10y ago
> Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Many companies mandate that you use Visual Studio to develop with because their entire toolchain is setup to build the project via VS tools. Deviating from that means that no one can help you, and you're probably polluting the repo with your own ad-hoc tooling.
pjmlp 10y ago
> Good luck getting an entire team onboard with a single IDE. Actually that is how many enterprise companies work. I usually get to use what the IT department from our customers has decided as IDE for a specific project. Anything else usually requires a change request with the necessary approvals at all levels, which means very few people ever bother to go through that pain, assuming that it will be approved in the end, because "I don't like X" won't work as reason.
- coldtea 10y ago

geodel 10y ago

> while kotlin can replace java completely I am not sure it can be be concluded from any data. They have come up with just a tech preview. Doing better job than Rust/Swift/Java or Go to have high perf on native platforms is going to be a huge effort. Just having a binding via LLVM is a small start. Hope they do better but for now it seems to me that hype around it is about 2-3 magnitudes higher than the actual amount of software written in it.

jorgemf 10y ago
kotlin can replace java completely because it compiles to bytecode (as java does). And then it is the bytecode what is compiled/interpreted in the JVM. The tech preview is about kotlin compiling directly to machine code. They already said they haven't done any optimization into that code. I guess they use some intermediate language for the compiler to translate it to machine code. (note that all the compilers translate the original input file into this intermediate language before compiling it to the final code, so they can do a lot of optimization and checks in this code which are shared among all languages)