Kotlin on .NET platform

Hello,
do you plan to port kotlin on .net platform?

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At the moment there are no such plans.

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Supporting .NET would be a great idea. I personally am looking at making a switch from native Android development back to Xamarin and one of the things I will really miss is Kotlin. C# is really good, but not as great as Kotlin.

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.NET needs Kotlin?

as a proof-of-concept))

It doesn’t seem a valid motivation.

My question is genuine: a .NET or LLVM Kotlin’s fork may be a waste of time.
Kotlin is designed to be a better Java, but it will be a better C#, F#, Rust, Typescript and so on?

another reason would be to port kotlin apps from jvm to .net or native as quickly and seamlessly as possible

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This can be a great reason but a language for all execution environment sound hard to do well.

However you can be interested to Kotlin Native. A frequent question about Kotlin is… | by Mike Hearn | Mike’s blog

.NET has F#. I don’t think so there is room for Kotlin.

For me, Kotlin on .NET would be a very good reason to jump onboard. I am waiting for a good language that allows me to build on both .NET Framework and JVM.

Currently the only language that allows this is Clojure so i might stick to that for a while.

Even if these VMs are different i strongly believe there should be a language that can be used on both.

Another good example is Powershell that is now available for linux which makes it in my opinion the best option for sell scripting.

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.NET is very fragmented now. The have 3 different not compatible platforms (.NET Framework, .NET Core, XAMARIN). The are going to make some cleanup with .NET Standard. I suppose it will take some time.

PS
And in this case I would like to have F# on JVM :smiley:

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Some points-

  • Compared to native, .net already has a gc and large standard library, So, porting should be easier. There are version of PHP(http://www.peachpie.io/) and Python(https://github.com/Microsoft/Pyjion) running on top of .net runtime.
  • Just like Java, Kotlin will appeal to C# devs a lot, which may not be true for some other languages like C, C++ or Go.
  • Native devs tend to not like runtime dependencies and gc.
  • F# on .net is not a problem. JVM already had Scala.
  • Kotlin already has Javascript as a target. So, Kotlin architecture is not JVM specific.
  • Jetbrains is already on .net foundation.
  • If you follow discussion on roslyn, the current open source C# compiler in Github, you will find C# is trying to be something like Kotlin. But maintaining backward compatibility is holding them back.
  • Kotlin has a converter from Java. A similar C# to Kotlin converter will be very useful to attract C# devs. And Jetbrains already parse C# for Resharper. and this conversion will be idiomatic for C# devs, which is not true for other platform devs. C# devs could not even move to F# that easily.
  • Jetbrains has Resharper with a large audience base. They can use it to push Kotlin. And a full featured IDE Rider is also on the way.

I see an unique opportunity for Kotlin in .net ecosystem. With it, it may become the ultimate garbage collected C-family language (Rust is the non-GC LLVM king), for every platform. In my simple knowledge I see more value in porting to .net than porting to LLVM/native for Kotlin. Please do it.

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Perhaps it’s not quite as easy:
JVM → Android, PC (Windows, OSX & Linux), Server(servlet container)
JS → Web, Server(nodejs)
Native → Android, iOS, PC (Any), almost any other target, Server(fastcgi)
.net → Windows phone, windows store, mono (linux, osX)

Then look at the market shares.

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I was looking at the developes’ mindshare, not platform marketshares. Is there any other developer groups, other than Java devs, Kotlin is a very good option(not just another option)? Given the native implementation is done, I think no. Considering Kotlin for different language devs-

  • Scala to Kotlin? Probably not enough reasons.
  • C? Probably sticking with C or going towards Rust or Go.
  • C++? Same as C.
  • Javascript? Sticking with itself. Typescript can be another viable option. Kotlin became just another minor option.
  • Python? Sticking with itself.
  • PHP? Stick with itself or move to Javascript/Ruby/Python.
  • Obj-C? Move to Switft.

C#? Hell yeah, if supported!

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Given that previous attempts to build alternative languages on the CLR (Boo, Nemerle, Scala.NET, even F#) saw extemely limited adoption, the “hell yeah” doesn’t actually sound believable. And C# is a much more modern, full-featured and nicely designed language than Java 8.

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I am really glad to see someone from JetBrains team responding. :slight_smile:
Other than Nemerle, those languages look very different from C#, and there was no one to make big push behind them. I assume, Kotlin was inspired by Nemerle and C# a lot. Nemele was acquired by JetBrains so far I knew. And Jetbrains has that ability to make the big push. Why would people use Kotlin instead of C#, given C# is already a nicely designed language? Because Kotlin has some features C# will probably never achieve because of backward compatibility.

However, I know a company like JetBrains will not start something just by a forum thread. I would request to assess the potential market value of Kotlin for .net in a formal way and compare that to potential of native market, if not done already. I may be wrong, but I think the value of former will be greater. That’s all.

We’ve done the assessments, and the result of those assessments is to invest into Kotlin Native and to not invest into Kotlin on the CLR.

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Then I rest my case. Looking forward to Kotlin Native.

No, more like:

.net → Windows phone, Windows Store, PC(any), mono/Xamarin (linux, Mac, Android, iOS), Server

.Net (really the CLR) has an extremely large market share

Native may have a bigger market share but would be a LOT more work.

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With .Net Core adoption on Linux C# should " kick ass Java :smiley: " → takes some market shares from Java on server side, gets some more open source projects …