> But if you make the choice of Java (boring) over Kotlin (shiny new), you’re possibly signing up for a curse of chasing NPEs

You are also choosing

-to let your team choose their own IDE

- easy to debug

- frameworks that works out of the box

- and continue to work regardless of Kotlin versions (since one doesn't use Kotlin)

- to no have to deal with a number of "interesting" ways to write code

I like Kotlin. But it is more nuanced than some people would like to have us believe.

Personally I think I have spent far more time over the last three or four years hand holding Kotlin and cleaning up "clean code" than I have saved by less NPEs.