[HN Gopher] The Kotlin Foundation
___________________________________________________________________
The Kotlin Foundation
Author : ta988
Score : 214 points
Date : 2021-02-13 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kotlinlang.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kotlinlang.org)
| biztos wrote:
| So Roman Elizarov is the Lead Language Designer, and also 1/3 of
| the Language Committee, so the Language Committee has to be
| united against him in order to block any design decision.
|
| I have no idea whether that's a good idea, but it looks a little
| funny.
|
| Also, is UT Austin officially involved, or is it just William R.
| Cook personally? This is ambiguous from the text.
|
| Anyway I hope this gets them whatever they want out of it, I
| quite like Kotlin and might learn it "for real" some day.
| nevi-me wrote:
| I'm assuming that if/when more organisations join, the Language
| Committe can be extended.
|
| The balance might still work out in the short-term, as the
| Language Committe's scope is narrower [0]. This makes sense as
| the LC seems to be more applicable for when external developers
| propose potentially breaking changes.
|
| [0] https://kotlinlang.org/docs/language-committee-
| guidelines.ht...
| peter_retief wrote:
| Kotlin is a really nice clean language to delop with, it should
| get more and more traction.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I would really like a Sphinx theme that is as clean as the theme
| of these docs. Most of the Sphinx themes are really kinda
| cluttered and not neat.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I've only ever used Kotlin for competitive programming, but I
| must say there is no other language that I get so much joy from
| using. I'm serious, Kotlin makes me happy.
|
| But, I have been worried about it's future. I hope this helps
| make sure it has a future.
| rogerthis wrote:
| That's not news. It exists since, well, I really don't remember
| (2018, I guess).
| davnicwil wrote:
| A question for HN - I like Java a lot for the 'http API talking
| to SQL database' usecase, with my goto for that being dropwizard
| or spring boot.
|
| I've only ever looked at Kotlin code in blogposts, haven't ever
| actually used it. I'm probably at least a few years behind on its
| feature set, but I am aware of all the great features Java has
| added in that timeframe, many no doubt inspired by Kotlin!
|
| Would you advise me to use Kotlin over Java building a new API
| from scratch in 2021, given where both languages and ecosystems
| are today? Why or why not?
| yes_but_no wrote:
| I would, main reason being calling Java from Kotlin is
| seamless. It makes most things easier by being expression
| oriented and having less verbose yet familiar syntax also saner
| type system. So you can just use it as better Java.
|
| If you want to go further you can also use other nice features
| like suspend functions, hot/cold channels, sealed classes.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| Try it out! I've been building with Java for about 13 years and
| just started playing around with Kotlin last year, and I must
| say that I fell in love immediately.
| prpl wrote:
| I did a dropwizard and kotlin project around 1.2.20 (3 years
| ago) and it was fine even then, with some minor rough edges.
|
| I would imagine everything is fine now.
| jitl wrote:
| Kotlin on the server is the dream
| marton78 wrote:
| For your use case just use PostgREST.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Other than Android, where Google is pushing Kotlin no matter
| what, I would use the platform's official language, Java.
|
| No need for FFI, additional IDE plugins, it works across all
| Java IDEs, no need for idiomatic plugins, annotations to make
| code understandable by the JVM, full access to JVM opcodes
| without constraints or special cases, and it will be around as
| long as the _Java_ Virtual Machine matters to the industry.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| My team uses Kotlin + Dropwizard + Postgres a lot. I would
| absolutely recommend trying Kotlin out on your next API. You
| will find the code very easy to learn coming from Java, and it
| is honestly a joy to work with compared to Java. You will find
| your code much more concise yet more readable. Also, IntelliJ
| gives you all kinds of hints for how you can make use of Kotlin
| language features.
|
| You can also easily handle nulls in Kotlin, since values have
| to be explicitly nullable in order to be able to have one. This
| is great for your application model layers. The val/var
| paradigm is nice so you can stop having to remember to write
| 'final'.
|
| If you ever get stuck and don't know how to write something in
| Kotlin, you can just write it in Java and either use it, or
| just paste the code in IntelliJ and it will convert it to
| Kotlin.
|
| Lastly, Kotest + Mockk is awesome--super readable testing.
| aweiland wrote:
| What do you use at the database layer? Hibernate, or
| something lighter, and more Kotlin native, like Exposed?
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| We use MyBatis annotations. Usually, for our specific use
| case we are calling a Postgres sproc. It was a little
| tricky for one part since we have a json type column, so we
| had to create our own little pgobject mapper which took a
| day to figure out how. Other than that, it has been a
| breeze.
| ta988 wrote:
| You have to consider not only the language but what the team
| working on it will look like. It is still a bit hard to find
| server-side kotlin devs. On the other hand in my experience,
| Java devs pick up Kotlin really quickly (as do Python devs
| interestingly whereas they struggled with Java).
|
| I'm a huge proponent of Kotlin on the server side, less on
| frontend (JS) side.
|
| If you go with Kotlin and Spring Boot, Micronaut or even just
| Ktor,you'll likely not regret the choice. (I have no experience
| with DropWizard).
|
| Now if you choose Java it will not be a horrible choice either,
| and it is not too hard to convert to Kotlin later if you
| need/want to. I've heard cases of people going back to Java a
| few years back, mostly for compiler performance reasons, but
| there has been a lot of effort on that recently. And while
| compiling Kotlin is still slower than compiling Java, the fact
| that you can divide things more easily in multiple files and
| incremental compilation compensates in most cases (except of
| course in the case f a clean build).
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Strictly imo, using Kotlin with Spring Boot defeats the
| purpose if you're trying to get away from traditional Java
| web frameworks (didn't think I needed to spell this out due
| to the next sentence, but HN gonna HN).
|
| Kotlin is a chance to get away from the cruft and annotation
| magic of traditional Java.
|
| I use Ktor and it's everything you need for a modern API (and
| can be deployed as a WAR if that's why you want Spring Boot)
|
| Ktor's API that will be familiar to anyone who's used similar
| "neo-web frameworks" in other languages like Gin or Express,
| and it allows you to architecture your app in a way that
| makes sense to you (so if you need DI, you can bring in
| something like Koin, but you're never compelled to by the
| framework)
| scaladev wrote:
| I thought ktor was a toy, but apparently YouTrack
| (JetBrains' alternative to Jira) is built on top of it:
|
| https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Third-
| Par...
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| It's not surprising that the company behind the language
| would promote use of tools native to that language. They
| have the incentive to fix the tools if bugs are found to
| make the ecosystem more attractive. Whether it's a good
| choice for your use case - you need to evaluate it.
| eweise wrote:
| My old team used Spring and Kotlin and it was a really
| productive combination. Spring isn't standing still. They
| have first class support for Kotlin and rewriting their
| framework to support the graalvm.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Spring is not standing still, and I'm not trying to claim
| it is, but there's still a fair bit of ceremony around a
| lot of features
|
| That's not necessarily a bad thing, _but_ usually people
| who are giving the JVM a "second chance" via Kotlin were
| initially turned off by that ceremony
|
| -
|
| So when someone asks me "What should framework should I
| try for Kotlin web services?" my answer is usually Ktor.
|
| Because if they had to ask me, they probably aren't going
| to be that in love with Spring Boot (people coming from
| Java from example, are usually just going to default to
| Spring Boot)
| brabel wrote:
| Java developers are spoiled for choice.
|
| There's everything, from the simplest possible
| https://sparkjava.com/, to the a little bit nicer
| https://javalin.io/ (which has a Kotlin wrapper), to the
| high performance and full framework https://vertx.io/
| (which always had great multi-lingual support within the
| JVM), to the newer and GraalVM-friendly
| https://micronaut.io/ and https://quarkus.io/ ... for the
| Enterprise-only crowd, you still have the JEE successor,
| https://jakarta.ee/ and Oracle's own
| https://helidon.io/#/ (which likes to position itself as
| microservice focused, like Micronaut and Quarkus). Not to
| mention lower level libraries you can use, like
| https://www.eclipse.org/jetty/ and https://netty.io/.
|
| Ktor has a tough fight to become dominant even in the
| Kotlin world.
|
| Spring Boot is, still, definitely the most popular
| option, but it's still just one of very very many!
| mkurz wrote:
| You forgot https://www.playframework.com/
| ivanche wrote:
| Just to add https://www.ninjaframework.org/
| vips7L wrote:
| Never again. Play is one the worst things I've had to
| work in. Too much scala when you're just trying to Java.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| vert.x has unfortunately reduced the support of JVM
| languages to Java, Kotlin and Groovy. No longer any Scala
| support, also no support of Javascript.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Or http4k, which implements "server as a function" and is
| fantastic for an API backend, with lenses/contracts,
| auto-serialization on top of your choice of
| Kotlinx/Gson/Moshi/Jackson, nested routing, so much more.
| ta988 wrote:
| It depends on your needs I guess. Not all API can be
| handled by just a few classes. If your plan is to maake a
| microservice that expose a single value, yes spring boot is
| likely overkill. But when you have complex models with
| runtime configuration and profiles and so on... Maybe we
| need to specify what we are really talking about when we
| say API. For some it just means a partial implementation of
| REST.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Who said anything about a few classes?
|
| How does using Ktor preclude one from using anything you
| just described?
|
| Lol just using Koin alone would bring every thing you
| just described, with the added benefit of not delving
| into XML files.
|
| Really some people are just married to the mentality of
| "If it's not on the feature list, I guess you can't do
| it". I believe in using focused tools that excel at
| specific things. Ktor lets you do that.
| shock-value wrote:
| Spring (and particularly Spring Boot) requires no XML for
| configuration -- everything can be done with annotations
| and plain Java (or Kotlin).
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The canonical way to use Profiles, even with Kotlin is
| with your Maven XML or a web.xml
|
| You can set them up other ways, but it just ends up
| making a lot of sense to define them there.
|
| To be fair, Ktor is pretty similar with the
| "application.conf" if you use the built-in Profiles
| equivalent:
| https://ktor.io/docs/configurations.html#hocon-overview
|
| I just prefer that if I'm using DI, the concept of
| environments be handled by DI. Scoping is what DI does
| best after all...
| vikingcaffiene wrote:
| I've been writing Kotlin professionally for the past 2 years.
| I'd highly recommend it as a worthy successor to Java. It's
| very powerful and thoughtfully designed. Java just feels so old
| and clunky after using it.
|
| I've not had the pleasure but I hear Scala is great too.
| pjmlp wrote:
| So is there a Kotlin Virtual Machine already available?
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'm doing a kotlin project. You won't find it hard or
| unfamiliar if you're used to Java. You still got gradle, and
| you still can use whatever java lib you want. It just feels
| much nicer in kotlin. Just jump into it, you can swap back if
| it doesn't suit you.
| brabel wrote:
| I've been using Kotlin in the backend since 1.0 (4 years
| now??) and it's great, but it does have a few small
| annoyances. We still have most of our codebase in Java and
| routinely, we create new Java code instead of Kotlin for
| everything, interestingly enough (mostly because when a
| module is already written in Java, it's mostly a source of
| confusion to add a few Kotlin files - so we tend to only use
| Kotlin when creating new modules that are fully Kotlin).
| Also, some of our developers just don't seem to have enough
| abstraction power for the higher level of code you can write
| in Kotlin (specially when you start using things like Kotlin
| builders to make code "prettier", or just abust a little bit
| the "everything is an expression" feature to completely avoid
| separete statements - e.g. functions without braces).
|
| People moving from Kotlin back to Java is not unheard of:
| https://blog.allegro.tech/2018/05/From-Java-to-Kotlin-and-
| Ba...
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Kotlin outside of Android is still a fancy new thing. I am not
| commenting on its capability but the trend.
|
| (On Android however it seems it's pretty much the only thing
| now. I am finding it the hard way now when I am looking for a
| job after staying on a project too long where things are still
| 98% Java)
|
| It's an amazing language. Just try not to write "Java code" (as
| in the Java way) in Kotlin (like many Android devs I see
| doing).
| sorokod wrote:
| I work in a fintech company, most of our backend is in Kotlin
| with "legacy" functionality in Java.
|
| Can't think of a single developer that would choose Java over
| Kotlin.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I'd choose Java over Kotlin. The benefits of Kotlin seem
| minor - mostly syntactic sugar - and the tooling is more
| limited than Java. They seem to solve problems with kludges
| (like their coroutines are really just state machines in JVM
| bytecode, which creates issues like irreducible control-flow)
| rather than properly engineering solutions like Java try to
| do.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| How is the tooling more limited? I have never had a problem
| using any java library/framework with Kotlin.
| peheje wrote:
| But... When Java gets "properly engineered solution" for
| async code... Kotlin got it as well!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| So why bother using Kotlin?
|
| Seems like it fixes trivial things (makes simple classes
| a bit more terse) but retains the more fundamental
| problems and hangs on for Java to actually fix those.
| listenallyall wrote:
| If Kotlin's only improvement over Java were its scope
| functions, that alone would be an overwhelmingly good
| reason to migrate. Scope functions are _awesome_ , cannot
| stress that enough.
|
| Kotlin syntax makes writing functional code beautiful and
| simple... map and fold and filter are so much easier to
| write than in any other language that also have the same
| functions, such as JS. Again, that alone would be enough
| to migrate.
|
| But there are still so many more simple, but incredibly
| useful functions like SubstringAfterLast which takes a
| nasty, ugly Split function into a beautiful, precise line
| of code. Just one example of many.
| pjmlp wrote:
| import static
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Kotlin fixes just trivial things - like nullability for
| example. Java still doesn't have a good solution, only
| about 5 bad ones and nothing is in sight. It even looks
| like Java designers simply don't consider it a problem
| anymore ...
|
| Instead, they focus on things like value types. Which are
| definitely cool, but they don't actually solve any of my
| problems. Typical business apps written in Java don't
| suffer from performance issues, they suffer from
| (accidental) complexity explosion and subsequent buginess
| (of which NPEs is a symptom).
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| When teams go so far as to consider alternatives to Java,
| memory footprint and poorly tuned GC are typical reasons.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| It's way more than terse classes. The syntax everywhere
| is cleaner. Higher order functions look so much nicer.
| Using val/var is superior to having to remember to write
| 'final' all the time. Kotlin also handles nullability way
| better. Ah, also, default arguments for
| constructors/methods. These features prevent a lot of
| developer mistakes, and thus better code is often
| achieved.
|
| Also, Kotlin usually forges ahead on features, and the
| Java is playing catch up. Take data classes for instance.
| If anything it seems like Kotlin gave Java a good kick in
| the pants to get it to start developing faster and adding
| modern language features.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not at all, because Kotlin wants to take it all, so they
| need to make the choice if they want to expose JVM
| features, or keep the language portable across all
| platforms that JetBrains wants to target with Kotlin.
|
| A good example is Kotlin/Native, by choosing a memory
| model incompatible with JVM code they failed, and were
| forced to go back into the drawing board for
| Kotlin/Native with a proper tracing GC.
| balfirevic wrote:
| If I were to use Kotlin server-side on JVM and didn't
| care about portability to other Kotlin platforms, could I
| not just use JVM green threads?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Depends on how Kotlin decides to expose them at the
| language level.
|
| For example, you need special syntax to use SAM types and
| Kotlin cannot use all use cases from interfaces with
| default methods.
|
| That is the thing with the _Java_ Virtual Machine, the
| bytecodes and runtime are designed for Java, all guest
| languages have to pretend to be Java.
|
| Just disassemble the amount of boilerplate generated by
| the Kolin compiler.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| This is not always the case. One example is checked
| exceptions which are purely Java thing and do not exist
| in JVM (outside of metadata). That always amused me, it's
| like a switch to remove checked exceptions from language,
| you can turn it any time without backward compatibility
| issues.
|
| Another example is inner classes. Inner class can access
| private fields of outer class in Java. But in JVM there's
| no inner class concept, so compiler generates synthetic
| accessors for outer class private fields and inner class
| uses those methods to access private fields. That was
| fixed recently, though, but it was the case for many
| decades.
|
| Also I remember some funny bytecode with try-finally, I
| think it's implemented with gotos.
|
| Of course Kotlin generates a lot more boilerplate, that's
| for sure.
| sorokod wrote:
| Just sharing my experience, to each his own.
| balfirevic wrote:
| How did Java (as opposed to JVM) try to properly engineer
| solution to the problem coroutines were created to solve?
| jsiepkes wrote:
| Project Loom: https://openjdk.java.net/projects/loom/
|
| The view being that async-await leads to a "What color is
| your function" problem (
| https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-
| is-... ).
| balfirevic wrote:
| "As opposed to JVM"
|
| You don't have to convince me that green threads are far
| superior to async-await - I already believe that.
|
| But that's not something Kotlin (nor Java, on the
| language level) could have solved.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > How did Java (as opposed to JVM)
|
| Well that's the point - they solved it in the JVM not as
| a kludge of bytecode.
| balfirevic wrote:
| Well, once that happened Kotlin also gets the solution.
|
| It's rude and unfair to call out a language as "solving
| the problems with kludges" when they literally could not
| have done anything better.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Anyone can propose changes to the JVM. The Java people
| did. The Kotlin people didn't. And the Kotlin approach
| generates bad (irreducible) bytecode.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Here is one, outside Android, Kotlin is other guest language
| that will fail to take _Java_ 's place on the _Java_ Virtual
| Machine.
| jorgemf wrote:
| Why do you say so?
|
| I do think kotlin isnt only aiming to the Java Virtual
| Machine, it is mucho more.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Life experience of seeing guest languages come and go,
| during the last 30 years, and never succeeding in the
| goal to replace platform languages.
|
| On the contrary, platform languages slowly acquire the
| relevant features of the shiny languages, which
| eventually either fade away or find a niche for survival.
|
| Kotlin will be relevant as long as Android exists, that
| is all.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Scala, Clojure, and Groovy are all mature languages that
| haven't gone anywhere. No one has a goal of replacing
| Java, and they all benefit from improvements to the JVM.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Mere blips on the Java eco-system, why do you think
| Typesafe has pivoted into Lightbend and now also does
| Java projects?
|
| Gradle and Google choosing it for Android are the only
| things that keeps Groovy still relevant.
|
| As for Clojure, it is its own thing, plugging into the
| host platforms.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| You can't go wrong with either choice. Both languages are
| mature enough to be used in production. I, personally, would
| use Java, but that's just my preference.
|
| Actually you don't really need any new features to write useful
| programs. They might help, but they are not necessary.
|
| My advice would be to learn both languages and use your own
| judgement which one you would like more.
| johnnycerberus wrote:
| Kotlin never appealed to backend developers (based on job ads,
| new open-source projects in the domain). Data pipelines,
| concurrency and streaming are becoming more and more part of
| what a backend dev should know. Instead, I've noticed that
| Scala is used in many systems where Java historically was less
| ergonomic for the task. Spark, Delta, Deequ, Scio, Finagle,
| Flink, Kafka, the Typelevel & ZIO ecosystems, Akka are some of
| the examples. Using Kotlin as a sugary interface to Spring
| Boot? Maybe for some that would be an incentive.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Kotlin is taking off on the backend. It took a little longer
| than some people might have hoped but all the big boys are
| doing backend development in Kotlin now.
| Square/Netflix/Uber/Twitter/AirBnB all traditionally Java
| houses have adopted Kotlin in one way or another.
|
| Scala on the other hand is facing a decline. Less so in Big
| Data where it is still doing well but I find increasingly
| it's not being chosen for new backend development.
| kitd wrote:
| Kafka (or rather Confluent) is actually moving parts of its
| code base to Java.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I think a big part of the appeal of Kotlin was that Scala was
| impractical for use on Android so Kotlin slid in as "the
| missing pieces" of Java.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| Yeah also somewhere after Java 7 (I think) Java stagnated
| because the next version was too ambitious (stuck in
| development-hell). To get back on track they cut a bunch of
| features, labelled it Java 8 and moved Jigsaw (the biggest
| hurdle) to Java 9. After this they also moved to the fixed
| release cycles.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Java stagnated because Google torpedoed Sun, left it sink
| without bothering to own Sun, Oracle was the only one
| that bothered to keep their buy offer (IBM withdrew
| theirs), and and to spend a couple of years setting the
| house straight.
|
| Yet, there are no FOSS language that matches JIT and GC
| capabilities of the JVM.
|
| Looking forward to the KVM, if Kotlin is so great.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because Google as Kotlin's Godfather is stagnating Android
| Java on purpose, on the proper JVM we don't have such
| constraints.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Can't really blame Google for deciding to move away from
| Java after the Oracle lawsuit.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Oracle has done the right thing to smash Google's own
| J++.
|
| Google had a easy way out after screwing up Sun, buy it.
| mraigig wrote:
| I recommend having a look at http4k as an alternative to Ktor
| and Spring as well.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Kotlin is my go-to general purpose language these days.
|
| I still use and enjoy a few others, namely Rust but unless I need
| something specific I don't generally need to look past Kotlin.
|
| You get the full JVM ecosystem, terse language that supports
| powerful abstractions and JVM runtime performance/features - i.e
| threads, debugging, prod tooling.
| hnrodey wrote:
| Any thoughts on if we are seeing the beginnings of a JetBrains
| acquisition from Google? There seem to be significant overlap
| between the JetBrains investments (people capital, intellectual
| property: IDE, language) and Google significantly using all of
| these things.
|
| edit: lol @ the down votes
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Jetbrains has a order of magnitude better internal culture that
| Google so I hope that never happen. JetBrains is one of the few
| NO bullshit company that continually refine it's products for
| improving the user experience.
| ta988 wrote:
| It is highly unlikely (I hope I'm not wrong). The way Jetbrains
| is financed and managed, they don't need that and they don't
| have pressure from any venture capitalists to go anywhere near
| that. That would also really likely harm their reputation
| really badly (but I said that of github as well and it was not
| as bad as I feared, so don't believe everything/anything I
| say).
| meddlepal wrote:
| I hope not. I will cry when Google inevitably fucks the product
| up then closes them down.
| preommr wrote:
| Does anyone at Google actually care that the company's
| reputation has become pretty bad?
|
| I know this comment is just a joke, but I think it's an
| indication of a bigger problem.
| some_anon_dude wrote:
| > The Foundation secures Kotlin's development and distribution as
| Free Software
|
| But then...
|
| > The code is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
| melling wrote:
| Interesting to watch Kotlin develop.
|
| It came in and filled the niche that i always thought Scala would
| fill.
|
| I've been doing mostly Swift for the past several years, and i
| love it.
|
| Scala 3 looks interesting but it seems to be moving slowly.
|
| I look forward to having another Java option if I ever get back
| to that platform. Java was cool in 1998 but after Swift, I'll
| need something nicer on the JVM
| ta988 wrote:
| Coming from Swift, you will not be lost in Kotlin.
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| Seconding this only thing that Kotlin does not give you is
| Associated Objects.
|
| You unfortunately cannot add new (stored) properties to
| existing types like you can in Swift.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I like Scala but it's pretty complicated. I'm hoping Kotlin
| might be just attainable enough for the masses.
| redwood wrote:
| Anyone try out https://github.com/realm/realm-kotlin for local
| state yet?
| maxpert wrote:
| I've used Kotlin on Server Side in production at a pretty
| significant scale and I think it's the most underrated thing for
| people using JVM on servers. I recently had a podcast with one of
| Spring dev advocates (Josh Long)
| https://spring.io/blog/2021/02/11/a-bootiful-podcast-doordas...
| (shameless plug) and brought similar discussion to table. I will
| seriously urge folks to try it and hopefully foundation will
| bring more goodness!
| holoduke wrote:
| We used it for 1 year. Using spring boot framework.
| Unfortunately we had to ditch it. Issues with multi annotation
| support. Problems with instant run / partial compile. Slower
| performance. This was about a year ago. Maybe things have been
| improved. But we also noted that many outstanding bugs were
| ignored by the main devs behind kotlin. Did not feel like a
| mature language. At least not now.
| brabel wrote:
| We've been using it since 1.0 and I agree with you that
| there's many rough edges... many projects may never run into
| them, but like you, we did have these issues you mention...
| slower performance by the compiler and IDE are very, very
| noticeable on a large Kotlin project (at runtime, we haven't
| had many issues - there's only a few cases Kotlin is slower
| than Java, but you can keep those in mind and avoid them when
| necessary[1])... one more issue is Dokka (the equivalent to
| Javadocs for Kotlin). It's still in alpha and it's pretty
| terrible, if I may say... it generates documentation that
| requires lots of JS libraries to run, which is just
| ridiculous. We ended up writing the documentation conversion
| ourselves instead of using Dokka (this was actually for an
| Android project - because we hadn't needed to publish docs
| for backend Kotlin before).
|
| That said: we still enjoy using Kotlin, I just wouldn't ditch
| Java for it if I had to pick one.
|
| [1] https://sites.google.com/a/athaydes.com/renato-
| athaydes/post...
| maxpert wrote:
| What version of springboot you were on?
| randompwd wrote:
| Have only used Kotlin with Spring Boot for server side REST api
| and the resulting code was, a lot of the time, very un-
| digestable. Quite ugly to the eyes.
|
| Looking to give Kotlin another shot for non-Android API
| consumption and it seems like Ktor is a frontrunner. Looking at
| Spring WebClient to consume a JSON API makes my eyes hurt
| compared to other languages.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Quite ugly to the eyes.
|
| The companion object makes things like loggers ugly. Skipping
| parentheses for method calls that take lambdas _can_ be nice,
| but all it does is safe a pair of parentheses, it makes for
| inconsistent syntax, and is pretty ugly when the method takes
| an arg. The lack of implicit upcasting is weird. The set /get
| sugar is nice, but it looks ugly when it's next to places
| where it doesn't work.
| yannoninator wrote:
| Rust, Python and now Kotlin.
|
| Just as PSF promoted Google to visionary sponsor, although I
| understand Jetbrains, but we see yet again our saviour Google on
| the board of yet another language, even after Rust formed its
| foundation.
|
| I guess I have no choice to accept this future we've put
| ourselves in.
| impulser_ wrote:
| Well Google does run and control the largest Java platform in
| the world by far. I think it would be a good thing to have them
| on your side when you are developing a language that
| interoperate with Java.
| pjmlp wrote:
| One would think, yet Android Java is stuck in a Java 8 subset
| with cherry picked features from OpenJDK.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| I agree with your general Google paranoia, but in this case I'm
| okay with it since Google is easily the number 1 user of Kotlin
| thanks to its roll in making Android development infinitely
| more productive.
| yannoninator wrote:
| Jane Street is the No. 1 user of OCaml for a very long time,
| although sponsoring it, they don't have a board seat on the
| OCaml Foundation.
|
| You don't need to provide a board seat to any company that
| tries to throw money at you, just because they use your
| language.
|
| Just make them a sponsor, and there are examples of this.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| What is your specific dislike about Google on the Rust
| Foundation board?
| yannoninator wrote:
| Steve, I don't understand why Google, Microsoft and AWS et.
| al are on a board of this new foundation. Who had a say on
| this decision?
|
| And the special guest is Huawei as well just because they use
| Rust in some way.
|
| I'd rather have them sponsor Rust without giving them too
| much control by placing them on the board.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| The foundation was created as a project of the core team.
| Nobody was a "special guest." All parties agreed to the
| terms. That's what the founders of an organization does.
|
| Again, specifically: what control are you worried about? I
| suspect that you think the foundation has powers it does
| not have.
| yannoninator wrote:
| It is the structure that I am concerned about.
|
| Again, I'd rather have them just sponsor Rust, why wasn't
| a gold or platinum sponsorship like structure considered
| without placing them on the board of directors.
|
| How about a corporate membership without voting rights?
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Right, but the structure is a secondary concern, in that
| you're concerned about the structure because it enables
| particular actions. What kind of vote are you worried
| about?
| yannoninator wrote:
| > Right, but the structure is a secondary concern,
|
| If it was the primary concern we wouldn't be having this
| conversation, lots of foundations have this structure.
|
| Right now, it is more likely that Facebook would get on
| the board before I can even donate.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Okay. I still don't understand specifically what your
| concern is. I would love to understand, but I'll drop it.
| Given the scope of the foundation and what it is and is
| not in charge of, I find this attitude _very_ confusing.
| high_density wrote:
| well Google's using all three in different ways...
|
| and another trend on prog. langs: they're becoming more and
| more similar feature-wise (eg. pattern matching)
| yannoninator wrote:
| > well Google's using all three in different ways...
|
| So that justifies giving them a seat at the board of
| directors and not just a sponsorship?
|
| Apple and Facebook both use Rust but I don't see anything
| about them being on the board (at least Facebook for now),
| the least I expect is sponsorship.
| ta988 wrote:
| Google contributes a lot to Kotlin though. So they are not
| just sponsors.
| yannoninator wrote:
| Interesting perspective, so just like Rust then? Seems
| like Google can just buy board seats then.
| ta988 wrote:
| If you mean by dedicating workforce (which costs money,
| and a lot for them because of their salaries policies)
| they are buying a seat? Yes. The same way a major
| contributor (not just code, but doc, funding, community
| building...) to a FOSS project often has more power on
| the decisions than users.
|
| Now I would be unhappy to see a company that just pours
| millions in a project, gets to take decisions but doesn't
| do anything else to make the project better. But I don't
| believe that's the case here.
| yannoninator wrote:
| You can do all of this without getting a board seat.
|
| It seems we are all OK with allowing this to happen, but
| we shall see.
| chuckSu wrote:
| We get it... you hate google
| dieortin wrote:
| I'm curious, what does Apple use Rust for?
| steveklabnik wrote:
| They were hiring for their storage and networking groups,
| but that's all we know.
| ta988 wrote:
| I understand that side (and I'm personally against Google's
| behavior, hegemony and influence on almost everything). But
| Google is one of the few companies that gives back to projects
| they use. You can't say that of many other companies that use
| tools and make sure they never contribute back (either
| financially or as code). As long as they don't put their adcrap
| in any of those languages or the things around them...
| yannoninator wrote:
| > But Google is one of the few companies that gives back to
| projects they use.
|
| Apple gives back to open source projects. Isn't Swift open
| source as well as LLVM and Webkit?
|
| Makes sense because they made them and a long time user of
| them.
| ta988 wrote:
| I didn't say some other companies don't give back either
|
| If you compare the number of companies using a project and
| how many contribute, you will likely only need one hand to
| count the later...
| yannoninator wrote:
| I don't think this is a good thing in the long term, a
| conflict of interest can arise, then Google would pull
| out.
|
| But then again, I guess I have no choice to accept this
| future we've put ourselves in.
|
| At least I can as an individual give back to Kotlin, no
| wait...
| arusahni wrote:
| WebKit has to be open source because it's a KHTML fork.
| cwzwarich wrote:
| This isn't actually true. KHTML is LGPL 2.0, so you can
| release source code for the pieces you modified and
| binary blobs for the rest. WebKit proper (as opposed to
| WebCore, which was based on KHTML, and JavaScriptCore,
| which was based on KJS) was originally not open source.
| arusahni wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks for the correction!
| nolok wrote:
| I'm not sure why the victim complex about Apple in your
| comment, he said too few companies do it and that remains
| true whether or not Apple is in that group. In fact that
| conversation has nothing to do with Apple.
| yannoninator wrote:
| > I'm not sure why the victim complex about Apple in your
| comment, he said too few companies do it
|
| Sure it's all good when companies fund projects they use,
| but that does not mean they should instantly get a board
| seat.
|
| It makes sense why Jane Street sponsors OCaml, does not
| mean they instantly get a board seat. I don't see Jane
| Street sponsoring RISC-V and getting a board seat do I?
|
| And it doesn't make sense to do so.
|
| I find is suspicious for companies to join or create a
| foundation and get automatically propped up on the board,
| especially Google.
|
| It's going to be much harder to remove them if your
| values are not aligned with theirs or you dare criticise
| them.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Google is highly invested Kotlin and it's success with
| Android and what I'm certain is the fact that they have
| huge Java code adds that I could see them having real
| value in slowly converting to kotlin and allowing Kotlin
| to be the first class choice where Java would be.
|
| Honestly I just don't see it here. Google's marketplace
| ambitions have not surfaced in these foundations. I would
| Love a real tangible counter example of Google leveraging
| their seat on a language committee to control the
| language in such a way it only furthers Googles
| interests. Even with the browser I don't see them
| outright controlling tc39 or WHATWG/W3C or the CSS
| working group. Otherwise HTML imports would be a thing
| right now (and arguably they should be but that's another
| debate)
|
| I don't defend what they're doing with Chrome the product
| but they so far have seemed to be pretty sane with
| standards bodies
|
| The thing about Google or any entity of their size is
| that they're huge and lots of different types of people
| work there, and I'd wave most aren't malicious
|
| That doesn't handwave legitimate complaints here and I
| don't like Google have arbitrary outsized influence
| either but I don't think that's the case with these
| commuters/foundations
| yannoninator wrote:
| > Google is highly invested Kotlin
|
| I don't see what benefit of putting them on the board
| would give them, same thing with Rust, just because it's
| used on Android? Was a gold sponsorship not enough?
|
| > Honestly I just don't see it here.
|
| You're not looking hard enough, they are bearing
| 'generous' gifts to these foundations, Example: OpenAI
| was all about openness weren't they?
|
| But a big somebody bared a huge gift and so much for
| 'Open AI'.
|
| Don't you think Google and others like them are doing the
| same thing such that they are getting you to use their
| products through their 'donations'?
|
| > That doesn't handwave legitimate complaints here and I
| don't like Google have arbitrary outsized influence
| either but I don't think that's the case with these
| commuters/foundations
|
| Again we shall see, but I am seeing this everywhere and I
| am not happy with the shift from community to corporation
| led open source projects. A sponsorship should be enough
| but they want more as always.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I can understand caution and concern and it's healthy to
| have it.
|
| That said, I'm unable to think of or find obvious
| examples of them having a track record of using
| foundations like this for their own agenda at the expense
| of the community, language or only to further their own
| ends. Even with the browser stuff there's Chrome the
| product which makes a lot of changes that does hurt the
| community but then there's Googles representation on tc39
| and in the web standards groups. With that I haven't
| found evidence of malpractice or foul play. Please give
| me some concrete evidence that they have a history of
| this as I'm not finding it.
|
| Doesn't mean that as a whole these companies get a pass
| for Bad behavior, I think a key to a great argument
| against something is to be able to scope what it does and
| doesn't do, so I hate to say they are doing this for
| malicious reasons only to be wrong (and again I'm not
| seeing evidence) and undercutting more legitimate
| arguments. Fundamentally that's the arching issue we end
| up with by just making assumptions without evidence at a
| minimum
| ta988 wrote:
| Kotlin is not a community led project. It has always been
| a Jetbrains led project, and that move to a foundation is
| a way to try to distribute responsibilities a bit more.
| At least thats how they sell it.
| oceankid wrote:
| Must be feeling some pressure because they've redesigned that
| homepage three or four times in a very short time.
| ta988 wrote:
| Yes they are working on a redesign (logo, graphic chart...) I
| guess they are trying things out.
| guytv wrote:
| I have been programming for 37 years now.
|
| Kotlin is just a joy to read and write.
|
| Usually when working on a new non-trivial task, I first think of
| the solution, then write it down in pseudo code.
|
| Reading a Java implementation of my original pseudo code - I
| sometimes feel the actual solution hides below layers of code.
| The solution is still there, but it is hard to see it.
|
| When comparing the resulting Kotlin code with the original
| solution written in pseudo - Ir can still be seen clearly.
|
| Kotlin does not get in the way, but still allows me to use strong
| typing and compile time checks to make sure my code is solid and
| stable without loosing readability.
|
| It is just great joy, fun, using it.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| 100% agreed. I use Java for work, used to use Python for little
| side projects, but started using Kotlin for side projects
| recently. It feels like the best of both worlds to me: the
| strict structure of Java, with the ease of writing new code of
| Python.
| brabel wrote:
| This is great for Kotlin! But I need to make an observation about
| Google...
|
| They're also co-founders of the Rust Foundation[1], the major
| member of the select group of companies at the table at WHATWG[2]
| (which amongst other things decide on the future of web
| technologies, including JavaScript) due to their browser's market
| share, and a "visionary sponsor" of the Python Foundation[3].
|
| They also develop a few programming languages themselves, like Go
| and Dart (not to mention their polemic Java implementation),
| besides their own OS (Android, Fuchsia).
|
| A company as large as Google is kind of expected to be using
| every technology in existence, but I still find it interesting
| how they're also making sure they also play a major role in the
| evoluation of such technologies by being part of any Foundation
| that might have any relevance whatsoever (if not via their own
| languages, at least by exerting influence on everything).
|
| [1] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-02-08-hello-
| worl...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26121937
| vram22 wrote:
| What is your point? Maybe you need to make it more clear.
| Note:I am neither pro nor con Google, although I have both
| praised them and critized them in the past, for different
| things.
| nindalf wrote:
| I think we have to understand that Google is a large company
| filled with people with technical skills. These people are
| rewarded for contributing to open source. So they do. That's
| it. It is entirely possible that maybe Google employees might
| want a feature that others don't, but I haven't seen that
| evidence.
|
| In 10 years of developing Go, I know of only 2 things that the
| community has disagreed on with the Go team - package
| management and generics. One is already fixed and the other
| will be in a year. Nothing I can think of wrt their
| contributions to Rust, Kotlin, C++, Python etc.
|
| No one has ever articulated why it's a bad thing that Google
| sponsors open source development. If someone could articulate
| specific reasons, that'd be great. But this kind of FUD comment
| ("hmm, they sponsor an awful lot don't they") doesn't add much.
| yannoninator wrote:
| This does not warrant them giving them a board seat just
| because they have cash.
|
| Go is moot point because they control that language anyway,
| people have no say on it except people who work at Google.
|
| No surprise that you cannot donate any money there.
| nindalf wrote:
| Foundation needs money (to hire employees) and resources
| (server time and bandwidth) to run. Sponsors of the
| foundation will fund this. It's as simple as that.
|
| Point out where this arrangement _hasn 't_ worked well.
| Otherwise you're just spreading FUD.
| yannoninator wrote:
| Never said I was against sponsorship, just don't put them
| on the board of directors, a gold/plat sponsorship
| without votes will do.
|
| Examples of foundations and centers that do this are R,
| OCaml, Zig and Ruby. All successful.
|
| > Point out where this arrangement hasn't worked well.
| Otherwise you're just spreading FUD.
|
| W3C and DRM, do you know who voted for this and who is on
| the board of directors of the W3C?
|
| If you need some time I'll wait.
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| This lacks nuance. You ignore the effect they have on the
| ecosystem as a whole. Mentioning the "Go community" and their
| "agreement" of Google's decisions without acknowledging this
| is disingenuous at best. They have already swayed and
| gatekept large swaths of the (web)development "community" by
| their decade-long dominance and no one can make an impactful,
| meaningful decision in that field without their implicit
| approval. Their dominance is felt best by the way they
| control the conversation i.e. what we don't talk about - i.e.
| the web among other things they touch sucks, continues to
| suck and it is going to get worse and less free and they are
| significant negative contributers. So yeah, I'd rather see
| them cut into pieces.
| nindalf wrote:
| Your comment lacks any content. You make vague claims of
| "effect on the ecosystem" without mentioning what that is.
| Give an example. Can people not create web frameworks? Can
| people not create products hosted on the web? Can people
| not use AWS or Azure for all their computing needs?
|
| You can't just claim "everything they touch sucks" without
| a single example or evidence to back it up. You look like a
| hater.
| dang wrote:
| Whoa, please don't post in the flamewar style to HN and
| please don't cross into personal attack. Those things
| aren't allowed here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cnl wrote:
| The pro-Googlers are out in force today, also in the
| "visionary" Python topic.
|
| FYI, often it is not possible to mention specifics
| because "open" source projects tightly control member
| opinions these days.
| smoldesu wrote:
| A lot of people here aren't necessarily pro-Googlers, but
| rather open-source contributors who want to secure a
| future for themselves. That's not a bad thing, and
| Google's partnership with open-source has been mostly
| benevolent. People are quick to point to the "killed by
| Google" argument, but how is Google going to kill an open
| project? If they stop funding it and nobody takes up the
| mantle of maintaining it, maybe it's not actually that
| useful anyways. In either case, you still have the option
| to maintain the code yourself.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > The pro-Googlers are out in force today
|
| This is a good way to categorically dismiss everyone with
| an opposing view, without the work of actually coming up
| with an argument.
| nindalf wrote:
| Thanks for the ad hominem attack. FYI, I have no google
| stock, never worked for google, have never contributed to
| a google open source project. If they're supposed to be
| paying me for pointing out common sense on this thread
| ... they're late on their payment.
| cambalache wrote:
| > Thanks for the ad hominem attack. FYI, I have no google
| stock, never worked for google, have never contributed to
| a google open source project. If they're supposed to be
| paying me for pointing out common sense on this thread
| ... they're late on their payment.
|
| If this is true (I doubt it) it is even sadder
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the HN guidelines like this. We're
| trying for something quite different here.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Google needs a real competitor, I feel like people don't try to
| create search engines because it's such a monolithic task and
| Google is so far ahead
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I read an article in the FT recently saying that a new batch
| of startups is looking at competing with Google in the
| search-engine field [0].
|
| [0] https://www.ft.com/content/24efc152-a65d-4c48-9032-ee349a
| 2c8...
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| Sorry for the off-topic post:
|
| Is there a good way to get non-paywalled access to this? It
| says I can read it if I register but today that's just one
| step too many for me ("_Another_ account? Really? _sigh_ "
| :) )
|
| I'm kinda curious to know why anyone is trying to start a
| new search engine(s), given both Google and Bing.
|
| (But apparently not curious enough to give my email address
| to Yet Another Website :) )
| piokoch wrote:
| Copy title, paste into search engine box and access from
| the search engine list. It seems FT wants to get the
| traffic and the indexing more than money from
| subscription.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| How many of these startups plan to actually compete instead
| of planning to be bought up by Google or Microsoft?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A company as large as Google is kind of expected to be using
| every technology in existence
|
| Moreover, as a public cloud provider, they are ultimately
| expected to be supporting virtually every technology in
| existence. Amazon (explicitly as AWS, usually) and Microsoft
| have pretty similar degree of foundation involvement
| yannoninator wrote:
| Sure, I do welcome the language getting support however, I
| can't help but think it may be to do with them being fined by
| Oracle in that lawsuit costing Google billions.
|
| But who knows, we are not allowed to ask these questions, just
| like why DRM was allowed into the web standard and W3C kept the
| votes secret.
|
| I don't like the route we are heading.
| tibiahurried wrote:
| Tried Kotlin, honestly I was not impressed. Tools (maven/gradle)
| wasn't as straight forward to setup as one would have expected. I
| am not impressed with the language itself and I had issue with
| conflicting libraries and kotlin versions.
|
| I switched back to modern Java and did not regret it.
|
| Java is catching up at a fast pace, I don't think Kotlin will
| ever replace Java or see mass adoption.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Kotlin has already pretty much replaced Java for Android devs.
| I see it doing something similar to Java use more generally
| (albeit more slowly than it did with Android).
| aweiland wrote:
| It's 3 lines in a build.gradle(.kts) to get running. We've been
| using it in production for 5 years without any issues you are
| describing.
| lokedhs wrote:
| I started using Java in the 90's and worked for Sun back in the
| day, so I have a reasonable amount of experience with it.
|
| Kotlin is a much better Java, and these days if I need to use the
| JVM, I will use Kotlin.
|
| However, I do feel that there is a huge missed opportunity in
| making something that is not just a better Java, but a better
| language. Kotlin has a lot of annoying limitations, almost all of
| which are there because the JVM doesn't allow better
| implementations using first-class JVM functionality.
|
| One of my favourite examples is multimethods which would be an
| amazing improvement. However, the JVM can't do dynamic dispatch
| on multiple arguments, so Kotlin will never get it. Sure, if they
| implement it, calling Kotlin from Java would be more complicated,
| but that really shouldn't restrict how the language evolves.
|
| Another thing I'd like to see changed is better support for
| DSL's. Some nice stuff has been done with the limited facilities
| that are available, but it always seems like I'm fighting the
| language when making DSL's. As someone who writes a lot of Lisp,
| I'd really like to see a macro system.
| _old_dude_ wrote:
| > JVM can't do dynamic dispatch on multiple arguments
|
| It can since Java 7, the instruction invokedynamic was added
| for this kind of stuff.
|
| The implementation for Pattern Matching (the project Amber) [1]
| will use the very same instruction.
|
| [1] https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/amber/pattern-
| match-...
| brabel wrote:
| Groovy has done dynamic dispatch this way for a decade now.
| pjmlp wrote:
| And if it wasn't for Gradle, it would have been forgotten
| for now.
|
| The language that was supposed to replace Java in JEE and
| Spring.
| the_only_law wrote:
| What ever happened to it? I recall Groovy and Grails
| being pretty big in the Java world several years ago.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The interest died off, JUGs stop talking about it and
| everyone went back to Java, while some of us got money to
| port those projects back to Java.
|
| Had it not been for Gradle, and there would be hardly a
| reason to learn it in 2021, other than historical
| interest.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I actually think that once you have Kotlin on top, it might
| open the door to another VM or bytecode generator. What's the
| point of having that abstraction if you're so tied to some
| other company VM?
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| It sounds like you are describing Groovy (which was mature even
| before Kotlin BTW).
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Another thing I'd like to see changed is better support for
| DSL's
|
| I keep waiting for a good solution for SQL in Java (or another
| language) that isn't a builder or a string with templating. I
| don't like what React does architecturally, but JSX shows how
| mixing languages in an elegant-ish way can be huge.
| chin7an wrote:
| Checkout jooq(1) for a SQL DSL in Java. I've used it with
| MySQL and love it. Trying to convince my employer for the
| paid version with RDS.
|
| [1] http://www.jooq.org/
| Retozi wrote:
| we use jooq extensively it's probably the most valuable
| tech in our backend.
|
| Also among various other tech stacks I've never seen
| something that hits the sweet spot between "plain sql" and
| "advantages of ORM-stuff" as well as jooq
| listenallyall wrote:
| Also, props to the primary developer Lucas, who directly
| replied to my questions within a day, twice
| mirekrusin wrote:
| String templating elevated to "tagged templates" [0] which
| dispatches template on your own function is suprisingly
| acceptable solution. I'm using it to drive mssql sql
| generation [1] and it works really well with type system
| around combinators. It's perfect, extremely lightweight way
| to achieve embedded dsl like experience.
|
| [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... [1]
| https://github.com/appliedblockchain/tsql
| brabel wrote:
| You and the PC probably would be happy with Groovy, specially
| with them adding a SQL DSL now: https://github.com/apache/gro
| ovy/blob/master/subprojects/gro...
|
| Groovy DSLs are much better than Kotlin's.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Gradle, perhaps unfairly, left me not liking Groovy.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| PL/SQL?
| pjmlp wrote:
| We had that in the past, SQLJ
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQLJ
| [deleted]
| anonyfox wrote:
| Next entity for the killed-by-google-graveyard?
|
| Joke aside, seems that kotlin is a niche player and will remain a
| better Java until something like Rust eventually takes over the
| enterprise market.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Kotlin on the server is growing in popularity and ecosystem,
| just a week ago Netflix open sourced a new Graphql client. Also
| Pivotal (the company behind Spring boot) is investing a lot in
| Kotlin. To have tried many language on the server, Kotlin is a
| gift and has made me as a developer both more productive and
| happier! It truly is a state of the art language in ergonomics
| that everybody should give a try
| pjmlp wrote:
| Almost 10 years ago Pivotal was doing exactly the same with
| Groovy, Scala and Clojure, where are Spring
| Groovy/Scala/Clojure 10 years later?
| ta988 wrote:
| I don't think any of these language efforts went anywhere
| near the support Kotlin now has in Spring. Doesn't mean it
| will not fail, but it is already further than any other..
| pjmlp wrote:
| Sure they were, Pivotal was screaming across all winds on
| Java conferences, just like they are doing nowadays with
| Kotlin.
|
| They are just betting on a new horse after the old ones
| failed to win the races they were set off to.
|
| I kept being downvoted when I talked about S4TF going
| nowhere and the news today prove many of us were right
| about it.
|
| Similarly I will give about 5 years time for Kotlin
| fashion to die everywhere outside Android, this assuming
| that Fuchsia won't eventually become the new darling.
|
| It is quite telling that Google's own business units like
| Ad Words and Google Pay rather go with Flutter, and write
| blog posts about it, instead of adopting KMM.
|
| Jetpack Composer is a political answer to Flutter.
| johnnycerberus wrote:
| I remember many years ago when Pivotal's website was
| featuring a module for Spring Scala saying something
| about concise API and other functional buzzwords. The
| same for Groovy, earlier.
| goto11 wrote:
| Rust will never take over the enterprise market from Java or
| Kotlin. It is a language for completely different use cases. I
| it more of a competitor to C++.
| wffurr wrote:
| Android development is a huge "niche".
|
| I don't see how Rust displaces Java or Kotlin. It's very
| different with different use cases that it's suited for and
| different strengths and weaknesses.
|
| Kotlin also seamlessly inter operates with Java, which is a big
| deal for any company with a large existing Java code base,
| which are legion.
| jswizzy wrote:
| Yep and with Kotlin and Swift having 90% of the same
| paradigms it's easy to switch between the two without having
| to think in contrasting paradigms.
| ta988 wrote:
| Kotlin is slowly getting in the industry as well. But really
| comparing Rust and Java (meaning the JVM, its languages and all
| the libs and tools) is not fair. They have different targets
| and respond to different needs. Of course, like everything,
| there are problems where their capabilities overlap and they
| would both work really well. But I have trouble believing this
| "new language that will rule them all" idea. We didn't really
| see that happen anywhere (or maybe we did and I'm missing an
| example of that).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Kotlin is meaningless outside Android development.
|
| Kotlin/Native is never going to be a match for other native
| languages, as its reboot by choosing an incompatible memory
| model with JVM languages has proven.
|
| While on the JVM, just like trying to replace C on UNIX,
| JavaScript on the browser, it is just another guest language
| dancing to Java tunes.
|
| Just another one to share seats between Beanshell, jTCL,
| Jython, JRuby, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Ceylon, XTend, without
| big daddys' help to force adoption down developer throats
| like they are doing on Android.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| If you missed it, the latest investment from Google to the Kotlin
| compiler is the KSP plugin: https://github.com/google/ksp
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| I didn't even know Kerbal Space Program allowed that kind of
| plugin!
| throwawinsider wrote:
| Regarding Google sponsoring every language, it's a well-known
| practice that Wall Street banks are the main donnors of both
| Democrats and Republicans.
|
| No better way to eliminate competing platforms than buying them
| up.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| What's next, google gets the majority of the browser market
| while also becoming the biggest donor of mozilla?
|
| oops...
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