Six months ago, Android announced the programming language, Kotlin as part of Android’s family of languages for use in Android apps. Since its introduction the number of apps in the Google Play store using Kotlin has doubled:
“Developers from Pinterest, to Expedia, to Basecamp — and many others — are finding their use of Kotlin is increasing productivity and their overall developer happiness levels.”
Android has provided resources to further promote the Kotlin language. Along with introduction of Kotlin support being built-in Android Studio 3.0, other important features are Android Kotlin Guides on GitHub, porting Android samples to Kotlin and nullability annotations to make the APIs friendlier to use in Kotlin.
To jump-start your introduction to Kotlin programming, Android has introduced a Java code to Kotlin converter which can be accomplished in two ways: Code → Convert Java File to Kotlin File and converting snippets of code just by pasting Java code into a Kotlin file.
Android maintains that it is not replacing the current JAVA and C++ language lineup. Rather Android has “added Java 8 language features support in Android Studio 3.0, and we’ve added more Java 8 language APIs in Android Oreo.” Also Android will continue to improve support for C++17 in the NDK.
For more information, visit the Android Kotlin Language.
