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eng_monkey

WTF? Some people are spending serious money on a PR campaign to promote Kotlin this week!

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1. Android is the largest mobile platform on the planet.

2. It's been around for a decade now, but has only supported development with Java and C++.

3. The most recent version of Java supported comes from 2011. And full C++ support is only recent.

4. Few people (if any) really like these options.

5. This week Google announced that Kotlin is the next "official" language with first-class support.

6. A temporary wave of stories appear on HN.

Are you new here? I'm sure that next week it'll go back to the usual threads about Rust or Haskell, or someone will start a retro fad around Algol-68 or something.

What?!

C++ might be a 2nd class citizen in SDK tooling, but it is supported since Android 1.5 and C++14 is fully supported.

How is that very recent?

EDIT: The NDK was actually released with v1.5 (2009), the v2.3 was when STL and exceptions support were added hence my error.

Maybe the OP meant using C++ without at least a Application dispatcher/container object written in Java. This has only been possible with the introduction of NativeActivity (which you don't need to derive from, but only refer to via the Manifest).

The NativeActivity class was introduced in Android 2.3, released in December 2010, almost 7 years ago!

Historically the Android platform provided only a very minimal C++ runtime support library, with no RTTI or C++ exceptions.

STL and exceptions are available since Android NDK Revision 5, released in December 2010, alongside Android 2.3.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads/revision_history...

How can it be historically, when the features are available since almost 7 years?

Um, but the STLport in r5 wasn't compatible with exceptions or RTTI. It says so in CPLUSPLUS-SUPPORT.html

There were other ones to choose from.

You can write android apps in c# or JavaScript too.

I'm not sure if you consider them "supported" but they both have pretty advanced tooling for the purpose.

The C# tooling is good but it's partially closed-source and sold by a vendor (Xamarin). On that basis I don't think it really 'counts'. JS does, at least, since there are many ways to ship JS-based Android apps for free.

Xamarin got bought by Microsoft, and they opened almost everything from Xamarin, except Xamarin Studio which got rebranded as Visual Studio for Mac.

If you write a C# app with Xamarin and have problems, then it's Xamarin's support problem. If you write a JavaScript app with Qt (I assume?), then it's Qt's support problem.

Now, if you write an app with Kotlin, then it's Google's support problem. I can see how that would change the game for a lot of shops.

I'm not sure I trust google to support anything properly, I'm glad it's Jetbrain's problem. Atleast their tooling isn't garbage.

It is much easier to squeeze support out of Xamarin than Google.

What are you going to do if your Kotlin app has some problems? Call Google on the phone? Write and email and expect an answer?

You can write a forum post. And then you'll get confirmations from another 100 developers, so you'll definitely feel a bit better and not alone in your pain. ;)

Google support - you mean this 50cm thick concrete wall developers and users are banging their heads on when they want some bugs fixed? Like e.g. this: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/hangouts/A5Rp...

Not really.

You don't have direct access to Android's API with C#, you use a dedicated runtime wrapping your calls and allowing you to interact with the framework. This comes with a very large variety of issues.

With kotlin, you have 100% interop for free.

> Are you new here? I'm sure that next week it'll go back to the usual threads about Rust or Haskell, or someone will start a retro fad around Algol-68 or something.

I just do not get how the disconnected list of events you provided justify the promotion of Kotlin we have seen this week. But hey, you might even be on the payroll.

I doubt it's being paid promoted, but I don't think your cynicism is unreasonable. It is pretty obvious that the big tech companies maintain a presence on this board and attempt influence through human and automated measures.

Yeah. Those nefarious Elm and Nim cartels, using Russian hackers to push their #fakenews to the top of HN every other week.

(I feel like I'm living through a bad acid trip)

Eh, neither Nim nor Elm are backed by huge companies. You'll want to look at Rust and Swift for that. ;)

Seriously though, speaking as a contributor to Nim, I can confidently say no-one in the Nim community organizes massive multi-post promotion campaigns like this. The only submissions that come from the core developers are the announcements for new language versions, and (unfortunately) none of the community members seem particularly inclined to regularly submit links to libraries/blog posts either.

I'm sure Elm developers do the same thing - it's the only way for such projects to actually gain recognition among other communities.

> You'll want to look at Rust and Swift for that. ;)

Is Mozilla a "huge company"?

Any community of sufficient size and influence invariably becomes an astroturf target.

The list of events seem pretty connected.

I wished we could auto filter HN with certain keywords

hnapp.com

Real programmers stick to algol 60!

Which actually is way better than C.

No man, next week the threads will be: Why I moved from Go (Or whatever was the FOTM) to Kotlin.

That will be a short article, though: "Because Go doesn't really work on Android. In fact, I don't even know what I was thinking. Seriously. Why'd I do that?"

(Yes, I know you can run Go code on Android but last I knew that's almost exactly literally what it is; you can run Go code on Android, but it has next to no integration with the rest of Android, just a very basic binding to things that are very cross-platform: https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/mobile/app)

It's not about android. People will start using Kotlin everywhere.

Remember Swift hypetrain a year or so ago? I do. People even made web frameworks with it.

7. Oracle can't sue Google over Kotlin.

correct

What if Oracle buys Jetbrains? :)

As someone who's become adept with a few modern statically typed languages (C#, TypeScript, F#), and still sometimes has to write (pull teeth) crufty old Java for Android development, I can tell you that I'm happily pitching into this PR campaign unpaid and of my own volition.

I wouldn't be surprised if money wasn't involved, HN has always worked like this.

Some tech post about some technology gets a ton of votes, some people get excited about the tech, they investigate and find articles about that tech, they share it, and all the excited people upvote it.

Has happened several times with Rust, Go, Ember, Meteor, Angular, TypeScript, etc etc

This time android support and that steve yegge blog post set it off (it probably wasn't an accident that these two coincided though?)

It's like an echo-chamber with ADHD

Kotlin is simply a much more modern option than Java in general, and doubly so for the old version of Java used for Android. Giving Kotlin some official backing gives it a lot of credibility. The big argument favour of using Java over Kotlin until now has been that Kotlin was seen as more of a fringe language than the one (Java) officially endorsed by Google. Now that has changed. As a Scala developer I'm quite happy that Kotlin is getting this much attention as I see it as Scala-lite. I doubt there's a campaign of any sort, just lots of excited developers who are sick of Java and excited about Kotlin.

You see too much into this. It was the same wave of HN interest when Swift was launched, back in 2014. Or when RubyMotion was announced a few years ago.

People are simply excited about being able to use Kotlin as an official alternative to Java on Android. I'm also pretty excited about this ...

People are just excited. Articles I have seen so far don't sound like PR. People are just excited that they will have an alternative to Java.

This is the same kind of an excitement as the one when Apple announced that Swift will be a first class citizen of iOS development. I rarely get excited with programming languages, but this one went straight to my heart. Maybe I am biased because I like JetBrains as a company.

I think it would behoove you to use Kotlin. When every other post on this board is about Kotlin, it is clear that is where the industry is headed. Use Kotlin, or risk being left behind.

Edit: Kotlin. Kotlin. more Kotlin.

Successful in spite the of the name

"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Kotlin" - George Orwell

Um, no. What happens on HN is nowhere near an industry driver. It's better than many forums, but it's not some powerhouse of technology industry influence, nor does a trending topic on HN necessarily indicate a particular trend in the industry in general.

Couldn't be that people are actually hyped about Kotlin?

Couldn't it be that we are all hyped about Kotlin because we read a new article about how incredible it is every 10 minutes? Chicken and egg.

No, because Google dropped huge announcement that Kotlin will be first-class citizen on Andorid. And there were people who like Kotlin, but knew it will be hard to use it in real life. They are happy now and having a moment. With time this wave will decrease, and something other will come. That's normal.

Is it possible that Google views JetBrains as an acquisition target?

Anything is possible but I believe both parties have stated they're happy with their current relationship and no one is looking for acquisition.

I have been hoping for this move, and then Google using Kotlin for Android. They made the smaller step of officially endorsing Kotlin which I think helps, but acquiring Jetbrains and opening the entire Intellij would be huge for the developer community, Android, Kotlin, etc...

Of course that assumes Google doesn't drop support a year later.

Yeah, please, no. Jetbrains have been a consistent, effective, and mature presence in this world for a long time. The last thing I would want would be to inflict Google's capricious approach to acquisitions on such a valuable player.

To put it into more perspective, I live in Orlando and Kotlin has been the new growing language for Android since before the announcement. Developers wind up trying Kotlin for themselves and enjoying it for themselves, the rising numbers and the fact Google realized it's popularity and adjusted their support for it shows that Kotlin is a reasonable solution for Android development. It also doesn't help the fact that Java is hostile against Android, and that Kotlin is working on native compilation, which could make it one day one of the most powerful assets of Android if they go full on for native compilation for Android, a benefit that afaik Java doesn't have.

The same thing of thing happens during/immediately after Google I/O, Microsoft Build, Apple WWDC(?), etc.

Hype can also occur (somewhat) naturally. It does happen.

News tends to follow current events.

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