> Kotlin for JS is really about selling IDEA licenses
Kotlin the entire language is about selling IDEA licenses.
Ever tried to read Kotlin in plaintext? It's terrible. The language makes you need the IDEA hints they give you to read it.
Kotlin the entire language is about selling IDEA licenses.
Ever tried to read Kotlin in plaintext? It's terrible. The language makes you need the IDEA hints they give you to read it.
If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere.
In 2019, 41% of Kotlin devs claimed to work on web back-ends. In 2020 it was 47%. In 2021 the survey changed wording but "server-side development" had increased to 52% of Kotlin devs.
Nice play there with the Java version numbers, it is still Java.
I disagree. While the Google announcement to officially support Kotlin surely gave it a big boost, Kotlin was already in widespread use for Android development well before Google announced their support for it in May 2017. Additionally, it was also gaining traction for server side development since before the Google announcement. I had been evaluating Kotlin closely during this time, and made the decision to start using Kotlin in our (primarily Java and entirely server-side) company codebase in late 2016 because I was already convinced Kotlin had a bright future. We weren't the only ones who thought this, I was tracking multiple other companies in our space (financial tech) that were evaluating and/or already moving to it too.
https://talkingkotlin.com/the-first-kotlin-commit-in-android...
It certainly would. Like so many other JVM languages. Android is what makes kotlin stand out from that crowd.
Arguably "particularly well supported by IntelliJ" is another thing that makes kotlin stand out from the crowd, but that's a two-edged sword. I'd expect the average JVM person to see that as roughly a tie between a quality and a cost (more lock-in).