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> Kotlin for JS is really about selling IDEA licenses Kotlin the entire language is about selling IDEA licenses. Ever tried to read Kotlin in plaintext? It's

> Kotlin for JS is really about selling IDEA licenses Kotlin the entire language is about selling IDEA licenses. Ever tried to read Kotlin in plaintext? It's terrible. The language makes you need the IDEA hints they give you to read it.

pjmlp 5y ago
Indeed and they aren't shy about it. If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere.
- listenallyall 5y ago
  Kotlin is gaining momentum outside of Android, which is the only platform that Google helped with. In other areas, like Flutter, Google is actually competing with Kotlin (KMM).
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Wishful thinking, enjoy your 8%. https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/
    - listenallyall 5y ago
      You have poor reading comprehension (in addition to a real hatred for one particular language, which seems unhealthy). I never stated that it was among the most popular languages, just that it was gaining momentum. In 2019, 41% of Kotlin devs claimed to work on web back-ends. In 2020 it was 47%. In 2021 the survey changed wording but "server-side development" had increased to 52% of Kotlin devs. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Ah, a survey from the company whose goal is to sell Kotlin, really conclusive.
    - matsemann 5y ago
      So Kotlin is already more popular than Scala and now the most used JVM language except Java itself, and is used almost as much as Java 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 combined. Not sure you should be that dismissive..
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Nope, Kotlin is behind Scala on reaching the peek of the adoption curve. Nice play there with the Java version numbers, it is still Java.
- chris_overseas 5y ago
  > If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere. I disagree. While the Google announcement to officially support Kotlin surely gave it a big boost, Kotlin was already in widespread use for Android development well before Google announced their support for it in May 2017. Additionally, it was also gaining traction for server side development since before the Google announcement. I had been evaluating Kotlin closely during this time, and made the decision to start using Kotlin in our (primarily Java and entirely server-side) company codebase in late 2016 because I was already convinced Kotlin had a bright future. We weren't the only ones who thought this, I was tracking multiple other companies in our space (financial tech) that were evaluating and/or already moving to it too.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    As much as Scala, or any other alternative language. You have to thank some certain Kotlin advocates for Google's decision. https://talkingkotlin.com/the-first-kotlin-commit-in-android/ https://talkingkotlin.com/the-first-kotlin-commit-in-android...
- nsonha 5y ago
  sorry that's not it, Kotlin was created as a better Java, and is growing out of that niche. If it wasn't for Android, Kotlin is still a good back end language, especially with so much JVM stuff that isn't going anywhere soon out there.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
  - usrusr 5y ago
    > If it wasn't for Android, Kotlin is still a good back end language It certainly would. Like so many other JVM languages. Android is what makes kotlin stand out from that crowd. Arguably "particularly well supported by IntelliJ" is another thing that makes kotlin stand out from the crowd, but that's a two-edged sword. I'd expect the average JVM person to see that as roughly a tie between a quality and a cost (more lock-in).
    - nsonha 5y ago
      I don't see any alternative JVM language competing with Kotlin right now to even have options. Scala 3 is in a very different space. Before Kotlin 1, scala 3 was no where near release. I remember eclipse X10, which was like a "transpiler for java" but it wasn't as ambitious as Kotlin with multiplatform planned.
asd88 5y ago
Can you elaborate on why you think it’s terrible to read in plaintext compared to other languages? I’ve been writing a lot of Kotlin recently and the only memorable extra hints (compared to other languages/IDEs) I see on IDEA are named parameters, smart casts, and the type of `it`/`this`. Sometimes I browse GitHub from my phone and I find Kotlin code very easy to read.
- whateveracct 5y ago
  Both lambda-with-receiver and `it` code are a lot harder to read without IDEA giving you hints
listenallyall 5y ago
Huh? Kotlin code tends to be very compact, often functional, and immutable and non-nullable variables (both by default) severely reduce cognitive load when reading code.
zem 5y ago
I've not done much kotlin, but whatever little I did was entirely in vim and it was a perfectly pleasant language to work with.

pjmlp 5y ago

Indeed and they aren't shy about it. If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere.

listenallyall 5y ago
Kotlin is gaining momentum outside of Android, which is the only platform that Google helped with. In other areas, like Flutter, Google is actually competing with Kotlin (KMM).
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Wishful thinking, enjoy your 8%. https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    You have poor reading comprehension (in addition to a real hatred for one particular language, which seems unhealthy). I never stated that it was among the most popular languages, just that it was gaining momentum. In 2019, 41% of Kotlin devs claimed to work on web back-ends. In 2020 it was 47%. In 2021 the survey changed wording but "server-side development" had increased to 52% of Kotlin devs. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Ah, a survey from the company whose goal is to sell Kotlin, really conclusive.
  - matsemann 5y ago
    So Kotlin is already more popular than Scala and now the most used JVM language except Java itself, and is used almost as much as Java 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 combined. Not sure you should be that dismissive..
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Nope, Kotlin is behind Scala on reaching the peek of the adoption curve. Nice play there with the Java version numbers, it is still Java.
chris_overseas 5y ago
> If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere. I disagree. While the Google announcement to officially support Kotlin surely gave it a big boost, Kotlin was already in widespread use for Android development well before Google announced their support for it in May 2017. Additionally, it was also gaining traction for server side development since before the Google announcement. I had been evaluating Kotlin closely during this time, and made the decision to start using Kotlin in our (primarily Java and entirely server-side) company codebase in late 2016 because I was already convinced Kotlin had a bright future. We weren't the only ones who thought this, I was tracking multiple other companies in our space (financial tech) that were evaluating and/or already moving to it too.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  As much as Scala, or any other alternative language. You have to thank some certain Kotlin advocates for Google's decision. https://talkingkotlin.com/the-first-kotlin-commit-in-android/ https://talkingkotlin.com/the-first-kotlin-commit-in-android...
nsonha 5y ago
sorry that's not it, Kotlin was created as a better Java, and is growing out of that niche. If it wasn't for Android, Kotlin is still a good back end language, especially with so much JVM stuff that isn't going anywhere soon out there.
- pjmlp 5y ago
- usrusr 5y ago
  > If it wasn't for Android, Kotlin is still a good back end language It certainly would. Like so many other JVM languages. Android is what makes kotlin stand out from that crowd. Arguably "particularly well supported by IntelliJ" is another thing that makes kotlin stand out from the crowd, but that's a two-edged sword. I'd expect the average JVM person to see that as roughly a tie between a quality and a cost (more lock-in).
  - nsonha 5y ago
    I don't see any alternative JVM language competing with Kotlin right now to even have options. Scala 3 is in a very different space. Before Kotlin 1, scala 3 was no where near release. I remember eclipse X10, which was like a "transpiler for java" but it wasn't as ambitious as Kotlin with multiplatform planned.

asd88 5y ago

Can you elaborate on why you think it’s terrible to read in plaintext compared to other languages? I’ve been writing a lot of Kotlin recently and the only memorable extra hints (compared to other languages/IDEs) I see on IDEA are named parameters, smart casts, and the type of `it`/`this`. Sometimes I browse GitHub from my phone and I find Kotlin code very easy to read.

whateveracct 5y ago
Both lambda-with-receiver and `it` code are a lot harder to read without IDEA giving you hints

listenallyall 5y ago

Huh? Kotlin code tends to be very compact, often functional, and immutable and non-nullable variables (both by default) severely reduce cognitive load when reading code.

zem 5y ago

I've not done much kotlin, but whatever little I did was entirely in vim and it was a perfectly pleasant language to work with.