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It runs on the JVM. That's one of its selling points. :)
by vikingcaffiene 6y ago
It runs on the JVM. That's one of its selling points. :)
- pjmlp 6y agoSo Kotlin is useless without Java then, unable to stand on its own.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoIt’s a great language to use instead of Java...especially for things that have to run on the JVM, or Android.
- pjmlp 6y agoSyntax sugar on the JVM, as it is never to be more than a blip on the Java Virtual Machine. As for the Android Runtime, Android team is gatekeeping Android Java on Java 8 subset on purpose, as means to serve their political games to push Kotlin no matter what. Kotlin without godfather Google will just fade away.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoI have no idea about any politics involved, but Kotlin is a really well designed language. Fixing Java piecemeal as has happened so far just seems like an impossible task, while the JVM is flexible enough to support it.
- pjmlp 6y agoYou have no idea? Missing the news? Google lets Android Java stagnate on purpose on Java 8 subset, with cherry picked APIs from newer OpenJDK versions, uses this language subset to sell Kotlin features over Java features on code samples comparisasions. Nowadays, all Android developer channels, regardless on which form, are all inundated with Kotlin material and how great it is over "Java" (actually Android Java). As for JVM being flexible enough to support Kotlin, doesn't seem to be appreciated by the Kotlin community that spits on the hand that has made the language possible to exist in first place. Language wars don't have a place when languages share the same platform, as such I have zero tolerance for communities that cargo cult otherwise. When Kotlin is so great and doesn't need Java for anything, they should port everything into Kotlin/Native and succeed on its own merits.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoThe JVM is just a detail, as a language designer, an utterly boring one. Who cares if your language is running on that or via native compilation. In fact, after seeing what happened at Microsoft with UwP, I’ll take convenience over ahead of time compilation any day. I also find language politics to be incredibly boring. Maybe you have a point, but I just want to write code in a language that isn’t 10 years out of date.
- pjmlp 6y agoLanguages without platforms fade away, history is full of examples. For better or worse, Kotlin designers have decided to make a deal with Android for turning it into Kotlin's plaform, and they definitely do not care what happens with the JVM. Kotlin designers will eventually, like everyone else, find out that one cannot stand on both sides when things start heating up. Then there is the whole matter of ChromeOS vs Android vs Fuchsia of Google's internal politics, and Kotlin is only relevant in one of them.
- vikingcaffiene 6y agoI don't know why you are replying with this like some kind of gotcha... First of all Java and the JVM are two different things. One is a language and one is a runtime. Yes Kotlin requires the JVM. So does Scala and a lot of other languages. Leveraging the JVM runtime means that Kotlin can inter-op with Java libraries and the ecosystem at large without having to build all those things anew. Its all upside. You get the niceties of the language plus the rich ecosystem. I can for instance leverage Apache POI in Kotlin to generate some excel workbooks despite the fact that that library is old af and doesn't know anything about Kotlin. I have in fact. It works great. Your argument doesn't have legs to stand on. Languages like Elixir leverage existing runtimes as well. Its not uncommon and its a feature not a bug.