Kotlin Course And Certification

What is Kotlin?

Kotlin is an all-purpose, open-source, free, statically typed “pragmatic” computer software programming language that was initially designed for the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and Android that joins together features of both object-oriented and functional. It is entirely focused on interoperability, safety, clarity, and tooling support.

Kotlin started at JetBrains, which is the company that is behind IntelliJ IDEA, in 2010, and has been made an open source project since 2012. The Kotlin team currently has more than 90 full-time members that are from JetBrains, and the Kotlin project on GitHub has more than 300 contributors. JetBrains makes use of Kotlin in many of its software products which include: its flagship IntelliJ IDEA.

Features of Kotlin

There are lots of features of Kotlin, and some of them are

1. Concise code: Kotlin has a very concise code when compared to java. It drastically takes down the amount of boilerplate code. So when compared to java you will write less amount of code in Kotlin, which increases the speed of your development.

2. Null Safety: Kotlin handles nulls very well. In Kotlin you cannot get a null pointer exception implicitly. Kotlin compiler by default does not allow any data type to have a value of null at compile time. So if you use Kotlin then it will take down the number of app crashes and give better user experience to your user.

3. Expressive code: Expressive code means the code that can be easily understandable by every developer. Kotlin is very expressive in nature. All its data types, built-in functions, keywords, etc. are very expressive and easily understandable. Kotlin is developed in such a way so that even a person who has never written anything in Kotlin can easily understand its code.

4. Modern features: As Kotlin is a fourth-generation language, it brings out and combines together a lot of new features such as Lambda functions, smart casts, null safety, operator overloading, etc. All of which will help you in increasing your productivity.

5. Interoperability with java: Kotlin is completely interoperable with Java. You can easily call your Kotlin code from Java and Java code from Kotlin. This ensures that the adoption is much easier and has lower-risk. There’s also an automated Java-to-Kotlin converter that is built into the IDE which simplifies the migration of the existing code. This it easy to work on an existing Android project.

6. JavaScript transpilation: You can transcompile your Kotlin code to a JavaScript code. That way even your Kotlin code can now be run on browsers. When you choose the JavaScript target, all the Kotlin code that is part of the project as well as the standard library that comes with Kotlin would be transpiled to JavaScript. However, this excludes the JDK and any JVM or Java framework or library that is being used. Any file that is not Kotlin would be ignored during compilation.

7. Native conversion (Kotlin Native) (Beta): Kotlin Native is a technology that is used for compiling Kotlin code to native binaries, which can run without a virtual machine. That way your Kotlin code would directly run on a system that dosent have any additional runtime or virtual machine.

Benefits of Kotlin

There are lots of benefits of Kotlin, and some of them are:

1. Kotlin code is very much safer.

2. Kotlin has better support for functional programming.

3. Kotlin hastens up every-day development tasks.

4. Kotlin helps with reducing errors and bugs that are in the code.

5. The codebase goes down and increases in quality.

6. The Kotlin community supports developers.