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I wonder what triggered the sudden change of mind. They have been pretty firm on wanting keeping it closed for the purpose of giving an edge to the Jetbrain ID

I wonder what triggered the sudden change of mind. They have been pretty firm on wanting keeping it closed for the purpose of giving an edge to the Jetbrain IDE's

wiseowise 1y ago
Kotlin adoption has been stagnating recently (subjectively) and VSCode + forks have massive market share. It was extremely shortsighted to think that a single language would sway people to IntelliJ instead of just limiting Kotlin’s growth.
- clumsysmurf 1y ago
  Kotlin dominates Android development, but Android Studio is free. Google has become more and more hostile towards indie Play Store developers, so in 2025 it is more risky and less lucrative. Kotlin's "home turf" (Android) may be losing developers faster faster than Jetbrains can gain them on other platforms. I assume its will be a polyglot world for some time to come, and devs that decide to retool into another stack could use anything else, leaving Kotlin behind.
  - sgammon 1y ago
    Android Studio is only "free" to the user.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  Hardly shortsighted. IntelliJ has a business model, Kotlin doesn't. Maximizing Kotlin usage does nothing for Jetbrains directly, just creates costs. And sure it brings people to IntelliJ, more importantly, it keeps them there. It's kinda like describing Apple as short sighted for not giving away the source code to all their frameworks. Doing so would maximise usage but that's not their goal.
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    > Maximizing Kotlin usage does nothing for Jetbrains directly, just creates costs. It brings mindshare and brand value. And it brings direct revenue in business contracts (I hope they get a hefty fee for supporting Google with Android Studio). It is also investment in the future. How many student curriculums, courses, tutorials use IntelliJ over VSCode? And how many of them convert to IntelliJ later? IntelliJ is always seen as that heavy industrial combiner for professional workers compared to nimble and hype VSCode. > And sure it brings people to IntelliJ, more importantly, it keeps them there. I might be a vocal minority here, but it keeps nothing but resentment in me. > It's kinda like describing Apple as short sighted for not giving away the source code to all their frameworks. Doing so would maximise usage but that's not their goal. Apple is trillion dollar hardware company with completely locked down ecosystem with millions (billion?) of people using their products. They can do whatever the f*k they want and developers will dance to their tune. The comparison you’re looking for is Borland. Delphi was once far more popular than Kotlin right now, and look how it ended up.
    - mike_hearn 1y ago
      Google pay JetBrains nothing for Android Studio. Source: I talked to them at KotlinConf about it. Why would they? Do you see Google taking out huge contracts with Oracle for Java, or Red Hat for Linux? Google hardly even contributes to upstream projects, let alone funds them via fat support contracts. They prefer to develop everything in house, acquire outright or maintain their own forks if that isn't viable. Google are members of the Kotlin Foundation. I guess as part of that they contribute towards the cost of the yearly conference. They've also generously open sourced some of the frameworks they built for Android. But go review the commit logs for IntelliJ or Kotlin and you'll see they're nearly all JB employees. As for the rest, words have meaning. "Brand value" means people are willing to pay for things associated with that brand. "Investment" means something that can potentially yield ROI. Something given away for free with no supporting business model isn't an investment, it's charity. The internet is littered with bitrotting projects that were treated as charity and then abandoned when the authors got tired of it. Apache fills up with more every year. The right comparison is thus not with Delphi (which made Borland a ton of money and is still on sale today via Embarcadero), but with NetBeans and Eclipse, both codebases abandoned by their former sponsors when the novelty value of having lots of users wore off. > I might be a vocal minority here, but it keeps nothing but resentment in me. OK, so don't use it then. Kotlin, at least in the JVM or JS variants, isn't the sort of language that requires a huge level of buy-in. I started using it before Kotlin 1.0 even came out, used it for the next decade after that, and was happy with it at every point. Back in those days the community was tiny but that doesn't matter due to its excellent JVM interop. At no point did I ever have any fear other than JetBrains not making enough money with it and defunding it. Fortunately, being a smart company, they haven't fallen into that trap.
mohamez 1y ago
One of the reasons might be that they realized that the absense of an official LSP for Kotlin will hinder its wide adoption by new developers who want to try Kotlin but don't want to move away from their favorite IDEs.
TheWiggles 1y ago
Supposedly Kotlin usage has gone down a little bit in the last TIOBE Index. So I think they are trying to get Kotlin usage up. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
- rhdunn 1y ago
  The TIOBE index is just reflecting search queries. If someone is familiar with a language, they would be searching about a specific framework, using LLMs/AI agents, and working on projects in that language. Those won't be reflected in the TIOBE index.
  - lolinder 1y ago
    Nit: TIOBE measures search results, not searches, specifically results for "Kotlin programming". But you're correct that it's a terrible metric for many reasons. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_definition/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_defin...
    - smokel 1y ago
      Thanks for sharing. This probably means that search results that state "<language> programming sucks" or "<language> programming blows" both increase the relevant score in the TIOBE Index.
- smokel 1y ago
  TIOBE is a famous benchmark, but it is also completely useless. There is a lot of legacy code out there that skews the benchmark, making the index an unreliable indicator of a programming language’s current popularity or the volume of active development in that language. You'd be hard-pressed to find a job where you can program Fortran or Assembly Language all day. It's a lot easier to find one where you can do Kotlin or Rust. Kotlin might not be as popular as one would hope, but that is not something you should conclude from the TIOBE Index.
xolve 1y ago
Most LLM based code-gen are VSCode forks. This reason would have certainly been on the list.
rochak 1y ago
I (and countless others I know) simply refuse to learn/use a language that locks you in an ecosystem. I haven’t taken Kotlin, C# or any of the Apple proprietary tech jobs and never will.
- sorcercode 1y ago
  what job do you currently take?
  - rochak 1y ago
    I work on backend (distributed systems) leveraging languages like Java, Python, Go, Ruby and TypeScript.
    - TiredOfLife 1y ago
      What ecosystem does C# lock you in compared to Java, Python, Go, Ruby and TypeScript?
      - rochak 1y ago
        Microsoft/Windows’s ecosystem. As an example, any general guide on the Internet or on Microsoft’s end is written assuming you are developing on and for Windows. I want to stay away from Windows as much as I possibly can but it just isn’t possible. That’s not the case with the other languages/ecosystems I mentioned.
        iLemming 1y ago
        After college I didn't do a lot of programming for some years. But then jumped into .Net with gusto, because I carried huge respect for Anders Hejlsberg. Back in college they taught us Pascal. It's not that I'm that old, it's just because I grew up in former Soviet Union, which has been lagging for decades behind American computer landscape, some curriculums ran with a huge delay. So, because I knew Pascal well, of course I was following Anders (creator of Turbo Pascal and Delphi). Anders worked for Borland. So, just so you know, Borland was huge back in the day, they made IDEs like Borland C++Builder and such. In fact, Borland was so big, my classmate one day has shocked me by telling me that he thought that the last name of Pascal (the mathematician) was "Borland", that's how (he thought) the company got its name. Anyway, Anders left Borland and joined Microsoft and then .NET with VB and C# came out. In the beginning I was elated. After a few years building .NET apps, websites and services, I started digging for other things. Without even realizing, I slowly left the .NET behind me. Getting out, I recognized that the entire .NET stinked with an aura of some kind of "mental prison". I can't really describe the feeling now, but the entire community felt to me like needing some kind of approval all the time — from mothership company, from influencers like Scott Hanselman, from the Stack Overflow team, or some others like Pluralsight (which in the beginning was very .NET-centric). I'm sure things perhaps have changed since then for the better — Satya has implemented some company-wide revolutionary changes, yet for me personally, the appeal of writing code targeting .NET has completely dissipated. I'm honestly not missing it a bit. Just a few months of coding something different taught me far more, improved my skills, and gave me invaluable perspective that I wouldn't find if I've stayed.

I wonder what triggered the sudden change of mind. They have been pretty firm on wanting keeping it closed for the purpose of giving an edge to the Jetbrain IDE's

wiseowise 1y ago

Kotlin adoption has been stagnating recently (subjectively) and VSCode + forks have massive market share. It was extremely shortsighted to think that a single language would sway people to IntelliJ instead of just limiting Kotlin’s growth.

clumsysmurf 1y ago
Kotlin dominates Android development, but Android Studio is free. Google has become more and more hostile towards indie Play Store developers, so in 2025 it is more risky and less lucrative. Kotlin's "home turf" (Android) may be losing developers faster faster than Jetbrains can gain them on other platforms. I assume its will be a polyglot world for some time to come, and devs that decide to retool into another stack could use anything else, leaving Kotlin behind.
- sgammon 1y ago
  Android Studio is only "free" to the user.
mike_hearn 1y ago
Hardly shortsighted. IntelliJ has a business model, Kotlin doesn't. Maximizing Kotlin usage does nothing for Jetbrains directly, just creates costs. And sure it brings people to IntelliJ, more importantly, it keeps them there. It's kinda like describing Apple as short sighted for not giving away the source code to all their frameworks. Doing so would maximise usage but that's not their goal.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > Maximizing Kotlin usage does nothing for Jetbrains directly, just creates costs. It brings mindshare and brand value. And it brings direct revenue in business contracts (I hope they get a hefty fee for supporting Google with Android Studio). It is also investment in the future. How many student curriculums, courses, tutorials use IntelliJ over VSCode? And how many of them convert to IntelliJ later? IntelliJ is always seen as that heavy industrial combiner for professional workers compared to nimble and hype VSCode. > And sure it brings people to IntelliJ, more importantly, it keeps them there. I might be a vocal minority here, but it keeps nothing but resentment in me. > It's kinda like describing Apple as short sighted for not giving away the source code to all their frameworks. Doing so would maximise usage but that's not their goal. Apple is trillion dollar hardware company with completely locked down ecosystem with millions (billion?) of people using their products. They can do whatever the f*k they want and developers will dance to their tune. The comparison you’re looking for is Borland. Delphi was once far more popular than Kotlin right now, and look how it ended up.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    Google pay JetBrains nothing for Android Studio. Source: I talked to them at KotlinConf about it. Why would they? Do you see Google taking out huge contracts with Oracle for Java, or Red Hat for Linux? Google hardly even contributes to upstream projects, let alone funds them via fat support contracts. They prefer to develop everything in house, acquire outright or maintain their own forks if that isn't viable. Google are members of the Kotlin Foundation. I guess as part of that they contribute towards the cost of the yearly conference. They've also generously open sourced some of the frameworks they built for Android. But go review the commit logs for IntelliJ or Kotlin and you'll see they're nearly all JB employees. As for the rest, words have meaning. "Brand value" means people are willing to pay for things associated with that brand. "Investment" means something that can potentially yield ROI. Something given away for free with no supporting business model isn't an investment, it's charity. The internet is littered with bitrotting projects that were treated as charity and then abandoned when the authors got tired of it. Apache fills up with more every year. The right comparison is thus not with Delphi (which made Borland a ton of money and is still on sale today via Embarcadero), but with NetBeans and Eclipse, both codebases abandoned by their former sponsors when the novelty value of having lots of users wore off. > I might be a vocal minority here, but it keeps nothing but resentment in me. OK, so don't use it then. Kotlin, at least in the JVM or JS variants, isn't the sort of language that requires a huge level of buy-in. I started using it before Kotlin 1.0 even came out, used it for the next decade after that, and was happy with it at every point. Back in those days the community was tiny but that doesn't matter due to its excellent JVM interop. At no point did I ever have any fear other than JetBrains not making enough money with it and defunding it. Fortunately, being a smart company, they haven't fallen into that trap.

mohamez 1y ago

One of the reasons might be that they realized that the absense of an official LSP for Kotlin will hinder its wide adoption by new developers who want to try Kotlin but don't want to move away from their favorite IDEs.

TheWiggles 1y ago

Supposedly Kotlin usage has gone down a little bit in the last TIOBE Index. So I think they are trying to get Kotlin usage up. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

rhdunn 1y ago
The TIOBE index is just reflecting search queries. If someone is familiar with a language, they would be searching about a specific framework, using LLMs/AI agents, and working on projects in that language. Those won't be reflected in the TIOBE index.
- lolinder 1y ago
  Nit: TIOBE measures search results, not searches, specifically results for "Kotlin programming". But you're correct that it's a terrible metric for many reasons. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_definition/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_defin...
  - smokel 1y ago
    Thanks for sharing. This probably means that search results that state "<language> programming sucks" or "<language> programming blows" both increase the relevant score in the TIOBE Index.
smokel 1y ago
TIOBE is a famous benchmark, but it is also completely useless. There is a lot of legacy code out there that skews the benchmark, making the index an unreliable indicator of a programming language’s current popularity or the volume of active development in that language. You'd be hard-pressed to find a job where you can program Fortran or Assembly Language all day. It's a lot easier to find one where you can do Kotlin or Rust. Kotlin might not be as popular as one would hope, but that is not something you should conclude from the TIOBE Index.

xolve 1y ago

Most LLM based code-gen are VSCode forks. This reason would have certainly been on the list.

rochak 1y ago

I (and countless others I know) simply refuse to learn/use a language that locks you in an ecosystem. I haven’t taken Kotlin, C# or any of the Apple proprietary tech jobs and never will.

sorcercode 1y ago
what job do you currently take?
- rochak 1y ago
  I work on backend (distributed systems) leveraging languages like Java, Python, Go, Ruby and TypeScript.
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    What ecosystem does C# lock you in compared to Java, Python, Go, Ruby and TypeScript?
    - rochak 1y ago
      Microsoft/Windows’s ecosystem. As an example, any general guide on the Internet or on Microsoft’s end is written assuming you are developing on and for Windows. I want to stay away from Windows as much as I possibly can but it just isn’t possible. That’s not the case with the other languages/ecosystems I mentioned.
      - iLemming 1y ago
        After college I didn't do a lot of programming for some years. But then jumped into .Net with gusto, because I carried huge respect for Anders Hejlsberg. Back in college they taught us Pascal. It's not that I'm that old, it's just because I grew up in former Soviet Union, which has been lagging for decades behind American computer landscape, some curriculums ran with a huge delay. So, because I knew Pascal well, of course I was following Anders (creator of Turbo Pascal and Delphi). Anders worked for Borland. So, just so you know, Borland was huge back in the day, they made IDEs like Borland C++Builder and such. In fact, Borland was so big, my classmate one day has shocked me by telling me that he thought that the last name of Pascal (the mathematician) was "Borland", that's how (he thought) the company got its name. Anyway, Anders left Borland and joined Microsoft and then .NET with VB and C# came out. In the beginning I was elated. After a few years building .NET apps, websites and services, I started digging for other things. Without even realizing, I slowly left the .NET behind me. Getting out, I recognized that the entire .NET stinked with an aura of some kind of "mental prison". I can't really describe the feeling now, but the entire community felt to me like needing some kind of approval all the time — from mothership company, from influencers like Scott Hanselman, from the Stack Overflow team, or some others like Pluralsight (which in the beginning was very .NET-centric). I'm sure things perhaps have changed since then for the better — Satya has implemented some company-wide revolutionary changes, yet for me personally, the appeal of writing code targeting .NET has completely dissipated. I'm honestly not missing it a bit. Just a few months of coding something different taught me far more, improved my skills, and gave me invaluable perspective that I wouldn't find if I've stayed.