Getting Started with Kotlin

1

Hi everyone!

I am just starting with Kotlin and Java and I wanted to get a good feel of how I can use the language and what is the best setup when developing with it.

Here are the questions that I had for the Kotlin enthusiastes out there:

  1. Appart from IntelliJ of course, what are the best tools that I should use in my Kotlin development?
  2. What kind of applications can I build with Kotlin? What is Kotlin best for?
  3. Appart from the stuff found on Jetbrains, what other communities or learning resources are there for the language?
  4. And finally, do you guys think Kotlin is suitable RIGHT NOW as we speak as a developement language?


I know I’m asking alot here but I thought that going straight to the source might help me get the best answers.

Thanks a lot for the help!

2

jpveilleux wrote:

Hi everyone!

I am just starting with Kotlin and Java and I wanted to get a good feel of how I can use the language and what is the best setup when developing with it.

Here are the questions that I had for the Kotlin enthusiastes out there:

  1. Appart from IntelliJ of course, what are the best tools that I should use in my Kotlin development?
  2. What kind of applications can I build with Kotlin? What is Kotlin best for?
  3. Appart from the stuff found on Jetbrains, what other communities or learning resources are there for the language?
  4. And finally, do you guys think Kotlin is suitable RIGHT NOW as we speak as a developement language?


    I know I’m asking alot here but I thought that going straight to the source might help me get the best answers.

    Thanks a lot for the help!


    Hi Jean-Philppe,

    1. There’s an Eclipse plugin being developed AFAIK but right now probably IDEA is your best bet. The free OSS edition works fine too if you do not have Ultimate.
    2. Kotlin is aimed at being a multi-purpose language so pretty much anything.
    3. Much of the resources are linked on http://kotlin.jetbrains.org. But there’s already things on GitHub for instance too as well as Stackoverflow.
    4. Until we hit Beta we don’t really recommend you put it into production, because some things might change (in terms of language stability). But definitely now’s the time to be investigating and digging in, so please, join in!

    Thanks

    3

    Thanks a lot for the quick answers! Very much appreciated.

    You said that until you guys reach Beta status that it’s not recommended to use it in a production evironement. My question then is: When do you expect a stable enough release of the language that you can call Beta to be released?

    Also I forgot to ask but are you aware of any frameworks or libraries being built or adapted around Kotlin at the moment?

    Again, thank you very much for you time and answers!

    4

    jpveilleux wrote:

    Thanks a lot for the quick answers! Very much appreciated.

    You said that until you guys reach Beta status that it’s not recommended to use it in a production evironement. My question then is: When do you expect a stable enough release of the language that you can call Beta to be released?

    Also I forgot to ask but are you aware of any frameworks or libraries being built or adapted around Kotlin at the moment?

    Again, thank you very much for you time and answers!

    I’ll let Andrey give you information on the timeline as he knows best. The reason for not using in production is mostly if there are language construct changes, but things are starting to become a bit more stable as we move into the next milestones so I’d not be too concerned either.

    Regarding frameworks, there’s already some in the works:

    and other things you can find on GitHub. But the more we get, the merrier :slight_smile:

    Also note that pretty much everything in Java can be used today with Kotlin as we’re Java interoperable.

    Thanks.   

    5

    Thanks again very much for the help!

    I will look into those links and try to search a bit more on github!

    Ok, now it’s time to have some fun! :wink:

    6

    You mean "Time to fun have is now" ![http://www.pixeljoint.com/files/icons/pjpa4403.gif](upload://eDmMuwiMbD7gzeu3iBqYtf5C3Cb.gif)

    7

    LOL ! :^O

    Good one!

    8

    kotlinAndroidLib needs to be updated to M3. This is a working Android app written in Kotlin https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers.

    The great thing about Kotlin is that you can mix and match between Kotlin and Java code in the same project so if you bumped into some Kotlin implementation limitation, you can just switch the part to Java. Kotlin’s Annotation implementation for example still have some problems right now (at least on Android) - so I use them instead of Java classes instead of Kotlin’s.