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Well maybe, but the Steve Yegge wrote this: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2017/05/why-kotlin-is-better-than-whatever-dumb.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.f

by wazoox 9y ago

Well maybe, but the Steve Yegge wrote this: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2017/05/why-kotlin-is-better-than-whatever-dumb.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2017/05/why-kotlin-is-better... Obviously these guy love Java. This, frankly, I can't understand. I've hated Java for 20 years :) However if you love Java, obviously you don't need to switch to Kotlin. If like 99% of people used to leaner languages, you find Java unbearably verbose, ugly, etc. Kotlin is a godsend.

clumsysmurf 9y ago
The problem with Yegge's post, is he opens up with these arguments: "Unfortunately -- for long complicated legacy reasons that nobody cares about -- some of Android's core APIs really are bad. I mean baaaaad bad. Shut the book, take a deep breath, and go out for coffee bad." "It turns out the perfect killer app here -- and this brings us full circle -- is Android's crappy Red Light APIs." He then concludes with: "Kotlin manages to help you route around just about all of Android's Red Lights, and turns the experience into something that on the whole I now find superior to iOS development. " ... but offers no compelling reason how Kotlin supports this conclusion.
- edem 9y ago
  Try it and you'll see.
zem 9y ago
i didn't get any sense that they loved java - note that none of their (very fair!) caveats dealt with kotlin as a language, just with the undeniable fact that the tooling ecosystem was a lot more immature than java's, and could cause you unexpected problems.
eludwig 9y ago
Agreed. A lot of this has to do with where you came from and what you were used to previously. I initially switched to Java in the late 90's from C++. At that time, C++ was just achieving (imo) its densest, most arcane features that were making me crazy. What I really wanted was a C+- or something that didn't force a bunch of stuff I didn't need on me. Java was exactly what I needed at that point. After 15-20 years of Java, I recently switched to full time Javascript development and woah! It was like the freshest breath of fresh air. What, no types if I don't want them? Closures and protoype inheritance? Yes, Omg! Imagine my dismay when I was first introduced to TypeScript! My code looked just like Java again. :( Seriously, I understand the reasoning behind TS and getting into it a little further convinced me it wasn't too bad after all. Again, what are you used to has a lot to do with your state of mind as a dev. Any language that lets developers express their intent in the way they like is great. Kotlin, Scala are like the JS & TS of the Java world. All good (as long as they work!).
- manyxcxi 9y ago
  In case you haven't played with it, you may find that you like Groovy for writing Java in a JavaScripty fashion. I have a ton of JS experience, and one thing that has continued to pain me with Java has been the arcane incantations required for Async and Closures. I'd used Groovy just a little bit here and there for Jenkins stuff, but I finally looked into while building a DSL for our company. Closures are first class, typing is generally pretty optional, and you can use just about any Java library. When in doubt, you can always just write plain old Java. I've become a huge fan, though I haven't started introducing any Groovy to my existing Java projects as they're mostly Maven built, and I don't really want to rock the boat. Speaking of Kotlin and JetBrains, IntelliJ has pretty good support for Groovy, and follows @Delegate annotations very well for hinting and IntelliSense. I made my entire DSL type hintable with like four annotations and a 4 line GDSL file.
  - h_r 9y ago
    I'm curious what you mean here with the implication that you couldn't simply add Groovy code to your existing apps built with Maven. Have you tried it? It has been probably over 5 years but when I was writing a lot of Java and Groovy, we were standardized on using Maven at that company. The Groovy Maven plugins worked and I had several projects with various mixtures of Groovy, all built with Maven: from Java with Groovy tests, to Groovy and Java throughout, to pure Groovy web services. It was a bit of a pain getting the configuration set up initially but it worked well.
    - manyxcxi 9y ago
      What I didn't say was that my only experience so far is with Groovy by itself, and using Gradle to build. It's not an implication of Groovy or Maven for not supporting it, it's that I don't know the right way to do it yet.
      - h_r 9y ago
        You can mix Java and Groovy with Gradle as well. This might help: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22369033/how-to-use-gradle-java-and-groovy-together https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22369033/how-to-use-grad... I haven't used Maven in a long time and I'm not sure what is the state of the Groovy Maven plugin. Writing unit tests in Groovy for your Java projects is a great, low risk way to get things working.
bsder 9y ago
His entire post basically boils down to: "It's like Java" and "It's got one hell of an IDE" Um, okay. I guess? There are other languages that are "like Java", and they don't count? So, basically all it takes to get a language adopted is a snazzy IDE? Wow. I guess we need to remember to design new languages to optimize for IDE integration rather than actual programming.

by wazoox 9y ago

clumsysmurf 9y ago

The problem with Yegge's post, is he opens up with these arguments: "Unfortunately -- for long complicated legacy reasons that nobody cares about -- some of Android's core APIs really are bad. I mean baaaaad bad. Shut the book, take a deep breath, and go out for coffee bad." "It turns out the perfect killer app here -- and this brings us full circle -- is Android's crappy Red Light APIs." He then concludes with: "Kotlin manages to help you route around just about all of Android's Red Lights, and turns the experience into something that on the whole I now find superior to iOS development. " ... but offers no compelling reason how Kotlin supports this conclusion.

edem 9y ago
Try it and you'll see.

zem 9y ago

i didn't get any sense that they loved java - note that none of their (very fair!) caveats dealt with kotlin as a language, just with the undeniable fact that the tooling ecosystem was a lot more immature than java's, and could cause you unexpected problems.

eludwig 9y ago

Agreed. A lot of this has to do with where you came from and what you were used to previously. I initially switched to Java in the late 90's from C++. At that time, C++ was just achieving (imo) its densest, most arcane features that were making me crazy. What I really wanted was a C+- or something that didn't force a bunch of stuff I didn't need on me. Java was exactly what I needed at that point. After 15-20 years of Java, I recently switched to full time Javascript development and woah! It was like the freshest breath of fresh air. What, no types if I don't want them? Closures and protoype inheritance? Yes, Omg! Imagine my dismay when I was first introduced to TypeScript! My code looked just like Java again. :( Seriously, I understand the reasoning behind TS and getting into it a little further convinced me it wasn't too bad after all. Again, what are you used to has a lot to do with your state of mind as a dev. Any language that lets developers express their intent in the way they like is great. Kotlin, Scala are like the JS & TS of the Java world. All good (as long as they work!).

manyxcxi 9y ago
In case you haven't played with it, you may find that you like Groovy for writing Java in a JavaScripty fashion. I have a ton of JS experience, and one thing that has continued to pain me with Java has been the arcane incantations required for Async and Closures. I'd used Groovy just a little bit here and there for Jenkins stuff, but I finally looked into while building a DSL for our company. Closures are first class, typing is generally pretty optional, and you can use just about any Java library. When in doubt, you can always just write plain old Java. I've become a huge fan, though I haven't started introducing any Groovy to my existing Java projects as they're mostly Maven built, and I don't really want to rock the boat. Speaking of Kotlin and JetBrains, IntelliJ has pretty good support for Groovy, and follows @Delegate annotations very well for hinting and IntelliSense. I made my entire DSL type hintable with like four annotations and a 4 line GDSL file.
- h_r 9y ago
  I'm curious what you mean here with the implication that you couldn't simply add Groovy code to your existing apps built with Maven. Have you tried it? It has been probably over 5 years but when I was writing a lot of Java and Groovy, we were standardized on using Maven at that company. The Groovy Maven plugins worked and I had several projects with various mixtures of Groovy, all built with Maven: from Java with Groovy tests, to Groovy and Java throughout, to pure Groovy web services. It was a bit of a pain getting the configuration set up initially but it worked well.
  - manyxcxi 9y ago
    What I didn't say was that my only experience so far is with Groovy by itself, and using Gradle to build. It's not an implication of Groovy or Maven for not supporting it, it's that I don't know the right way to do it yet.
    - h_r 9y ago
      You can mix Java and Groovy with Gradle as well. This might help: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22369033/how-to-use-gradle-java-and-groovy-together https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22369033/how-to-use-grad... I haven't used Maven in a long time and I'm not sure what is the state of the Groovy Maven plugin. Writing unit tests in Groovy for your Java projects is a great, low risk way to get things working.

bsder 9y ago

His entire post basically boils down to: "It's like Java" and "It's got one hell of an IDE" Um, okay. I guess? There are other languages that are "like Java", and they don't count? So, basically all it takes to get a language adopted is a snazzy IDE? Wow. I guess we need to remember to design new languages to optimize for IDE integration rather than actual programming.