Kotlin is the Future

Java is boring, and Kotlin is the future. In July 2018 Cédric Beust (@cbeust), creator of Android Gmail and TestNG, was interviewed on the Talking Kotlin Podcast.  The entire interview is well worth a listen, but I wanted to share a short quote from him.

”A lot of these engineers are getting a bit bored by Java, and a bit burned out by Java. And then when you tell them they can actually start writing in Kotlin, suddenly their work becomes interesting again. So not only that, but I think there is a point that can be made, that when you start offering Kotlin to your engineers as a possibility, they are also more likely to stay with you, as opposed to going to work with another company, where they are going to be working on yet another mobile app, but oh, they haven’t adopted Kotlin yet, so you’re going to go back to Java.

Most people who start working in Kotlin, will probably never want to go back to Java, and it’s going to dictate how they look for a job, and how they look at opportunities.

It’s probably one of the first questions they ask future employers – do you guys use Kotlin or Java?

And if you say you’re using Java, first of all they’re not going to be happy, because they don’t want to write in Java, but another reason why they might turn you down is because they are thinking, well these guys are still developing mobile software the way we used to five years ago, so I don’t really want to go back into that world.”

So if you’re just getting into mobile development in Android and were on the fence about whether to learn Java or Kotlin, hopefully, this might give you a hint. 😉

A Comparison of Swift and Kotlin Languages

I spent many hours working on this article , along with the author and other editors on the Ray Wenderlich Android team.  The article compares and contrasts the Swift and Kotlin programming languages. Even if your interest is only with Kotlin, there is still a ton of great information here. Please have a read and let me know what you think!

Introduction to Android Studio – Building your first Android Mobile App

Have you wanted to get started with mobile development but didn’t know where to start?  Come on a short journey with me where I will show you how to create your first mobile application using Android Studio.  No prior programming experience is needed.  I would love your feedback, feel free to leave a comment or write to me.  This is the first of a series of companion videos for The Kotlin Book.

This video assumes you’ve already downloaded an installed Android Studio.  If you haven’t, you can get it here.

Kotlin for Swift Developers: A Brief Comparison

Just as Swift is the future of iOS development, so too is Kotlin the future of Android development. The two languages have an uncanny similarity, as well. However, while we are still waiting for Swift to become available for server-side development, Kotlin can already be used anywhere Java is currently used. Hence, by picking up Kotlin, not only do you open the door to Android development without having to deal directly with Java, but full stack development suddenly becomes a reality. In this post I just want to give a high level comparison of the two languages. However in the posts to come I plan to share my findings as I deep dive into Kotlin and Android development while teaching it to college students.
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