I Have problems with Android Studio, version 2.1.0.0 does not include the possibility to program in Kotlin.
So, I install version 2.3.0.0. But this version, don’t run.
Probably the problem is, the amount of memory that requires (I have 2Gb and 1’5Gb on disk), or some service that the program explicitly needs and is disabled. Or maybe the S.O. (I have a win-XP).
The fact is that it does not indicate anything. Double click the executable, you see it appear in the task manager, and after 2-3 seconds it is downloaded without any notification (I do not see anything in the event log).
So, I wonder if there are other IDEs where Kotlin can run, to program for android. I have thought that if there is a much lighter IDE (I do not need thousands of advanced things while learning kotlin), that would be enough.
Kotlin, boast of some things, could also boast a light IDE (alternative to a more complete and ‘business’), and that I do not know???
To be honest, I think I need all the “thousands of advanced” extra features provided by Intellij IDEA to help me learn Kotlin. If I was using a lighter IDE with less guidance, hints and tools, I’d have given up and gone back to Java.
You can program in Kotlin using a text editor such as Sublime Text or Visual Studio Code, and build your programs using Gradle from the command line. You won’t have access to a debugger, though; debugging is only available in Android Studio.
To be honest, if you’re running on Win-XP, I think you should seriously consider upgrading the computer… But that’s another discussion and there’ll be reasons as to why you haven’t done that.
It seems that few have picked up on this, but your main issue is the fact that you have a woefully low amount of memory (given that you use winXP it’s probably a very old system). You probably have to go with a solution that is not a full-featured IDE. Intellij (and by extension android studio) likes its memory (1.5GB is not a lot for this). In more modern versions gradle uses a process called the gradle daemon (another 1GB per daemon). I’d strongly advise you to use a physical device, not an emulator (yet another GB of memory). I would put the default “comfortable” minimum memory level for android at 8GB. It may be possible for you to use android studio 2.3, but you will have to disable the gradle daemon at the very least, you probably want to also run in powersafe mode (this disables constant monitoring and reindexing of your code). Android studio with your environment is so much a stress that it is not hard to imagine why google doesn’t consider it very realistic.
Btw. for intellij swap space (virtual memory) is mostly irrelevant, as the whole point of its memory use is to be faster than the disk (one of the reasons why using a flash disk provides very large speed increases in intellij).
On the debugging, I would not be surprised if you could get studio 2.1 to happily display your kotlin source code while debugging. Unfortunately kotlin plays tricks with source lines for inline functions (the java class format is limited to a single source file, even though inline code comes from a different source file, kotlin adds the relevant information somewhere else, but a java debugger wouldn’t know to look there) so those will not display correctly.
