I am exploring option to create new web app and finalized to create a react js based web app. I came across the kotlin+react. Now i didn’t find the strong reason to use kotlin over react.
Why should i use kotlin+react over standard js+react app? What is the benefit and advantages provided by kotlin.
Assume i have a existing js+react app, what will be biggest driver to move towards kotlin + react?
Assume i am starting a new web react app, what will be the biggest factor to convince the team to start using kotlin + react?
I don’t see a huge gain in switch an existing app. The effort probably isn’t worth it.
The main benefits are the same as Kotlin in general - you get a strongly-typed, clean, well-designed language. If you don’t like JS (no need to get into flame wars, but it’s an understandable position), it’s a nice way to take advantage of React without some of the JS downsides. And if you’re using Kotlin on the server side, you get to use the same language.
There are downsides as well, notably that the compiled result will almost certainly be larger using Kotlin. It’s also somewhat painful to integrate with some JS libraries (it’s always possible, but sometimes it takes a bit of doing).
Kotlin-react works really well for reasons already mentioned by @steamstreet.
However, it is not a problem to integrate with third party libraries if you accept that all calls to them will be done through dynamic() (you can indeed make proper integrations, but as mentioned that can be a bit painful).
This is my index.kt file for jquery (we use jquery because of bootstrap):
external val jQuery: dynamic = definedExternally
Currently the only problem with kotlin-react is that there are false react-warnings in the browser-console. Issues have been submitted.