Hacker News Reader

Comment by mike_hearn | Hacker News Reader

Counter-example: Kotlin.

Not at all, given the way Google is pushing it on Android, they are even mischievous enough to compare Kotlin with Java 6 when going on about why Kotlin.

For all practical purposes ART has turned into the Kotlin Virtual Machine.

However it so happens, that to keep the advantage of using Java libraries in the Android ecosystem, they actually need to support newer Java libraries unless they feel like rewriting all of them into Kotlin.

So Android 12 and 13 got a subset of Java 11 LTS, and Android 14 is getting Java 17 LTS support.

That doesn't change the reasoning that Android is all about Kotlin nowadays, unless one is writing platform code itself.

The idea Kotlin wouldn't be successful without Android isn't right. It was taking off in a big way even before Android did anything with it officially. Google's stated rationale for adopting it was because developers were already migrating to it regardless of what Google wanted.

Google is in bed with JetBrains in what concerns Android.

How is that a counter example? Doesn’t Kotlin fulfil a similar role for Android?

Kotlin wasn't created by Google and wasn't pushed by them. It's more like they accepted it because the Android developer base was adopting it organically en-masse anyway. That's also the case for many other places where Java is used.

It was pushed by Android team, the same folks that came up with Jetpack stuff.

Additionally JetBrains has their fingers all over the place in Android.

Kotlin, Android Studio a mix of InteliJ and Clion, Compose,...

That's not a counter example:

https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*sojK...

Kotlin would be likely still nowhere without Google and Android.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com