Category: Kotlin

Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language that runs on the JVM. It can also be compiled to JavaScript source code. Kotlin has some amazingly cool features!

The advantages of using Kotlin

• Kotlin compiles to JVM bytecode or JavaScript. It is of greatest interest to people who work with Java today.
• Koltin comes with type system helps you avoid null pointer exceptions.
• It targets Java 6, so you can use it even if your deployment makes upgrading to a newer JVM difficult.
• Kotlin provides functional programming support with zero-overhead lambdas and ability to do mapping, folding etc over standard Java collections.
• Kotlin is completely open source, it also has one-click Java to Kotlin converter tool using which you can convert an existing Java project one file at a time and everything will still compile, even for complex programs that run to millions of lines of code.
• Kotlin allows you to keep using your productivity enhancing tools. If you use IntelliJ, IDE interop is entirely seamless: code can be refactored, searched, navigated and auto completed as if the Kotlin code was Java and vice-versa. There is full support for debugging, unit testing, profiling and so on.

Features of Kotlin

• Null safety lets the compiler systematically flag potential null pointer dereferences.
• Kotlin allows us to extend the functionality of existing classes without inheriting from them.
• Kotlin supports smart casts which is capable of handling all the redundant classes by itself.
• Delegation i.e forwarding methods can be done automatically.
• In Kotlin, you don’t have to specify the type of each variable explicitly, even though Kotlin is strongly typed.
• Kotlin has a keyword called object which allows us to define an object, similar to a class. That object then only exists as a single instance. This is a useful way to create singletons.

So basically these are some features and a general overview about Kotlin.