Are you planning to design a digital product on an Android platform? Kotlin for Android development is one of the key trends emerging in app development fields. Android app developers trust this advanced programming language for developing both mobile and web applications. Kotlin for Android development saves time in the development process with its concise and intuitive syntax ensuring code safety.

What is Kotlin Programming Language? 

When it comes to choosing an open-source, easy-to-read programming language, Android developers are rooting for Kotlin. What is the exact reason for this widespread popularity of Kotlin programming language? Kotlin makes the process of app development fast, secure and easy with its short, simple, and safe coding, compatibility with other programming languages, and seamless integration in the Android platform.  

In this post, we will discuss how Kotlin can assist and benefit you in integrating a seamless platform for Android apps development, its features, the future, and what makes it a better programming language than Java. So, without further ado, let’s get to know more about Kotlin. 

Purposes Solved by Kotlin

JetBrains released Kotlin in 2016 with the prime objective of making it a language that a developer can use in any part of a software system. In 2017, Google announced Kotlin’s first-class support for Android app development. 

Let’s understand the various purposes of Kotlin programing language:

• You can put Kotlin together with Java Virtual Machine to make this open-source language available for all areas where Java is commonly utilized. In particular, you can use it on the backend process.
• You can compile Kotlin with JavaScript and use it on the frontend.
• Kotlin is professionally crafted to perform flawlessly in web development and server-side development processes as well. 
• Kotlin supports multi-platform programming helping in reducing time writing codes and maintaining the same syntax for multiple platforms without disturbing the regular flow. 
• With Kotlin, you can build an app’s user interface without limiting yourself to any restrictions. Therefore the app’s appearance, behavior, and performance stay native. The native user interface offers an excellent user-experience to your customers.

Platforms Targeted by Kotlin

The platforms supported by Kotlin where for each one there’s statically typed open-source programming language offering target presets are mentioned below:

• Kotlin/JVM
• Kotlin/JS
• Android Applications and Libraries
• Android NDK
• Linux
• Windows
• iOS
• macOS
• watchOS
• tvOS
• WebAssembly

Kotlin Libraries Helping Developers Make The Right Decision

Reasons why Kotlin is becoming a fast-growing and preferred language among developers:

• Compact and concise syntax
• Single type system
• Safety from null reference
• Data classes
• Functional programming
• Android extensions
• Operator overloading
• Scope functions

Kotlin core libraries have made this language feature-rich and app development with Kotlin is an extraordinary journey for developers. 

The two core libraries of Kotlin are – standard library and Kotlin.test library. Building a performant Android application is becoming easier with assistance from Kotlin libraries. 

Kotlin’s Standard Library and Kotlin.test Library Offering Advanced App Development Process

The standard library helps in every essential aspect of regular tasks with Kotlin in an app development project. These tasks include:

• Advanced functions applying idiomatic patterns, like let, use, synchronized, etc.
• Extension functions delivering query tasks for sequences and collections.
• Multiple usefulness for operating with strings and char sequences.
• Extensions for Java Development Kit (JDK) classes, making it suitable to work with files, streams, and threading.

Kotlin.test library helps in testing different Kotlin projects at multiple steps. Its usefulness include:

• Giving annotations to signify test functions and a series of utility functions to implement assertions in tests, separately based on the test framework being utilized.
• Helping the test framework be extracted through the Assert class.
• Offering out-of-the-box assistance to basic test asserter execution and annotation implemented for various testing frameworks, such as Mocha, Jasmine, Jest, etc.
• Giving developers a chance to switch on a custom unit testing framework in an innovative way.

Kotlin vs Java – What to Choose? 

Mobile application development with Kotlin programming language is becoming popular amongst developers. Google has considered Kotlin as the preferred language for Android app developers. Java was launched before Kotlin, hence, developers have used Java more than Kotlin. Due to usability, tools, and framework, Kotlin is gaining steady recognition, and soon, it will dominate the Android development industry. Kotlin vs java has a wide perspective of differences. Major reasons why mobile application developers are preferring Kotlin over Java are: 

• Kotlin Puts an End to Null References

  Null Pointer Exception usually occurs in Java programs when an application attempts to utilize a particular object reference having a null value. The primary reason for choosing Kotlin over Java is its ability to eliminate the occurrence of null references. Kotlin’s type system is designed to differentiate between references assigned to null objects and those that cannot. Thus, it can easily put an end to the jeopardy caused by null references from the code, eliminating the possibility of system crashes or application failure.

Read more: https://mobisoftinfotech.com/resources/blog/kotlin-for-android-development