The modern world demands modern approaches implemented everywhere. Therefore, it has become imperative for businesses to own a mobile application or a website to support the requirements of customers and fulfill them as they ask for any services from them. Therefore, the development of such applications has grown to its fullest and now it is required to make the development process faster as more requirements are arising and the competition is increasing.
Mobile applications are primarily developed in either the Android or iOS platform. These two platforms hold a major share of the mobile phone market where Android is in the lead. Being an open-source platform to choose, more mobile phone manufacturers are inclined towards choosing Android as their platform. Therefore, the requirement for Android application is most and the developers are required to possess knowledge regarding Android application development to get the coins rolling.
Android App Development
Java is recognized as the Android app programming language. With all the major IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) supporting Java as the programming language, it has earned quite a name in the market. However, developing an application using Java requires the developer to possess extensive knowledge regarding the language to develop an excellent application. Therefore, with the approaches of the development being updated frequently, developers were eager to use another language that can facilitate better programming experience for developing an Android application.
Introduction to Kotlin
Kotlin is an alternative to Java which is developed by JetBrains open-source and has been announced officially an Android application development language by Google through including support for Kotlin based development in their IDE, Android Studio. Therefore, Kotlin started gaining attention from the developers once it was integrated with the most popular IDE.
Ease of use, better coding experience, exceptional exception handling and support from Google worked its charm in making Kotlin one of the developers’ favorite programming languages. Kotlin compiles to Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which adds the object code functionality which includes platform independence in it and makes it a hero of Android app programming. Also, as Kotlin is fully compatible with Java, upgrading from Java to Kotlin is easier than ever and hence developers are finding it more useful to develop an application working on the Android platform.
When hiring a developer, the companies look for thorough knowledge in Java, which includes the coding and reasoning ability. Therefore, it is essential to possess knowledge of Java when starting with coding. However, these companies now look to hire android developer who are also good at Kotlin to ensure their development process is faster and a better application is getting delivered to their clients.
Helps in Server Side Development
Kotlin is built in a way to support general development features along with including specific support for Android development. Therefore, it is easier to develop a server-side application using Kotlin which is efficiently running and fulfilling every criterion set by the clients.
Less Coding
Kotlin is primarily developed with the intention of reducing the coding complexity. Hence, the language is designed in a way that the compiler understands most of the code by itself and the developer is required to write as much less code as possible. Therefore, the coding standard is improved along with less fuss on coding complexity.
Kotlin is Functional Language also
Including the same object-oriented property like Java, Kotlin offers the best experience with operating as a functional language also. Therefore, Kotlin poses itself as a language that works better than Java, C#, and others.
Compatible with Java
As Kotlin is fully-compatible with Java, it can make use of the frameworks supportive to Java and a developer can easily code an application without needing newer resources. Allowing the usage of existing resources, Kotlin poses itself as the best alternative available for developing an application. Also, placing a call from Kotlin code to Java code and Java code to Kotlin is possible. Therefore, the newer trends in the industry are inclined towards the development of application in Kotlin.
Extending the Functionalities
Inheriting the same concept from C#, Kotlin allows extending functionalities of a class without needing to inherit it. Well, this significantly reduces the code length as the code required for inheriting a function is not to be written here. Also, it eliminates the requirement for making changes in the existing code.
Therefore, Kotlin has been working fabulously and making the development easier for the developers. Opting for Kotlin has much more to offer and can boost the development speed also. And today even business giants like Pinterest, Square, Basecamp and many have opted for this interesting and helpful language and have been earning their name in the competitive market. And the technological shift from Java to Kotlin has improved the development methods and other important aspects of development. Hence, considering the domain of Android app development, Kotlin poses as the best option for starting off for the beginners in this field as it is predicted for sure that Kotlin is going to be the hero of Android app development in near future.
