I have intermediate knowledge of C++ and I’m really interested in Android development! So can i start it by learning Kotlin? I’ve seen that people say you need to learn Java in order to learn Kotlin so I’m a bit confused about it. So what should I do? Any suggestions or mentorship would be highly appreciated.
~ Thanks
Well short answer yes you can start.
Long answer: Kotlin is now the official language for developing on Android (endorsed and supported by Google), previously the language for Android development was Java. This means that from Kotlin you will at times need to use Java API - which Kotlin does efforlessly - but you might need to understand some Java, like what a method declaration looks like, how Java types map to Kotlin types etc… it’s not much, but not totally negligible.
So you’ll need a bit of Java, but a small bit.
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I am semi-comfortable with C++ (I can make things but I’m not a pro) and I found Kotlin so easy to pick up that it was like learning a language I already knew, at least for the basics. It took me much longer to get comfortable with Android Studio (although eventually I loved it so much that I went and got IntelliJ too) than it did to learn enough Kotlin to feel good making things. I would call myself semi-comfortable with Kotlin as well (I can make things but I’m not a pro). If you are pretty comfortable with C++ then Kotlin won’t be too hard to pick up at all. I have no significant experience with Java but it all still felt good. The lack of pointers is not a big deal because references tend to work how you expect them to work. It never feels that different from C++. I think you’ll be fine. Good luck!
You definitely don’t need to know Java to start. It could help, like if you can’t find a Kotlin solution searching “how to … in java” will give you more options. IDEA does convert Java to Kotlin though, and you know C++ so I doubt you’d have trouble reading the code anyway, but it is something to keep in mind.
But besides that, I took an Android class in college and that jumped straight into it with Kotlin (without requiring/assuming Java knowledge), and it wasn’t a problem at all. And that was a couple years ago, now Kotlin is even more first-class in Android development. I did already know Kotlin, and that was the first semester the class didn’t use Java (I even helped the professor with Kotlin a little bit), but it definitely showed that knowing Java isn’t necessary.
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