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Ways Jetpack Has Helped Android Leapfrog iOS for Developers

1 points by philk10 8y ago

BoorishBears 8y ago
I vastly prefer Swift to Kotlin, the latter of which feels like a knee jerk reaction to Java. Like someone who was upset they had to write Java for years decided to make a language as overly sweetened as possible and more syntax thank you can shake a stick at (and bringing back gotos as “return@“)
- vorg 8y ago
  Kotlin is as much a reaction to Apache Groovy as it is to java. E.g. whereas Groovy did builders, Kotlin did them with static typing. And "knee-jerk" is inaccurate. Kotlin's business case was considered carefully by Jetbrains, just as Swift's was by Apple.
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    If you take my comment literally, it doesn’t make sense (how do you have a knee jerk reaction to a language as old as Java?) If you understand it’s not literal you should be able to see Im not saying it is literally a knee jerk reaction to the language but rather it feels like one. As in it’s almost as if someone went “I’m going to make the most not stuffy Java stuff language I can with every morsel of syntax I can stuff and add support for DSLs that look nothing like valid code and fuck the ternary operator, just make a disgusting looking assignment from an If/else because breaking the readers flow to parse that is much better than just properly formatting your ternary operator” Swift has exactly the right amount of syntax and feels like a nuanced attempt at a modern dev friendly language, to Kotlin’s hamfisted behemoth.
- zmmmmm 8y ago
  You say "overly sweetened" as a pejorative but I'm curious what is wrong with a language being "too sweet"? Is it because it becomes too complex, too hard to learn? This is definitely what I feel with Groovy, which looks simple on the surface but is actually quite hard to teach to people because there is so much implicit behavior. But then, we're not in kindergarten here, every tool I use is a long term investment so I don't mind that too much if there is payback in the long run.
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    Two sweet means it tries to do too much to feel “nice” to write. If you’re removing the cognitive lid from the person writing and dumping it on the person reading you’re not only not reducing the overall cognitive load required for your code, you’re increasing it exponentially. Code generally is written once and read multiple times. Shoving bundles of syntactical sugar so that there are 5 ways to do any given thing just so that you can always choose the (Grooviest/Kotliniest) way in a given context must feel great to write with but now every reader must be aware of those 5 ways to do things. We’re not in school period, investing time inanguages that are almost masturbatory over how “sweet” their syntax is isn’t generating revenue. I can’t name one company that succeeded because they used Groovy, but every single one would immediately cut out access to a large pool of talented individuals who are wizards of the JVM, also that what? They can have 5? forms of string literals?

1 points by philk10 8y ago

I vastly prefer Swift to Kotlin, the latter of which feels like a knee jerk reaction to Java. Like someone who was upset they had to write Java for years decided to make a language as overly sweetened as possible and more syntax thank you can shake a stick at (and bringing back gotos as “return@“)

vorg 8y ago
Kotlin is as much a reaction to Apache Groovy as it is to java. E.g. whereas Groovy did builders, Kotlin did them with static typing. And "knee-jerk" is inaccurate. Kotlin's business case was considered carefully by Jetbrains, just as Swift's was by Apple.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  If you take my comment literally, it doesn’t make sense (how do you have a knee jerk reaction to a language as old as Java?) If you understand it’s not literal you should be able to see Im not saying it is literally a knee jerk reaction to the language but rather it feels like one. As in it’s almost as if someone went “I’m going to make the most not stuffy Java stuff language I can with every morsel of syntax I can stuff and add support for DSLs that look nothing like valid code and fuck the ternary operator, just make a disgusting looking assignment from an If/else because breaking the readers flow to parse that is much better than just properly formatting your ternary operator” Swift has exactly the right amount of syntax and feels like a nuanced attempt at a modern dev friendly language, to Kotlin’s hamfisted behemoth.
zmmmmm 8y ago
You say "overly sweetened" as a pejorative but I'm curious what is wrong with a language being "too sweet"? Is it because it becomes too complex, too hard to learn? This is definitely what I feel with Groovy, which looks simple on the surface but is actually quite hard to teach to people because there is so much implicit behavior. But then, we're not in kindergarten here, every tool I use is a long term investment so I don't mind that too much if there is payback in the long run.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  Two sweet means it tries to do too much to feel “nice” to write. If you’re removing the cognitive lid from the person writing and dumping it on the person reading you’re not only not reducing the overall cognitive load required for your code, you’re increasing it exponentially. Code generally is written once and read multiple times. Shoving bundles of syntactical sugar so that there are 5 ways to do any given thing just so that you can always choose the (Grooviest/Kotliniest) way in a given context must feel great to write with but now every reader must be aware of those 5 ways to do things. We’re not in school period, investing time inanguages that are almost masturbatory over how “sweet” their syntax is isn’t generating revenue. I can’t name one company that succeeded because they used Groovy, but every single one would immediately cut out access to a large pool of talented individuals who are wizards of the JVM, also that what? They can have 5? forms of string literals?