Overall, I think Kotlin is a vastly superior language to Java and spanks Scala in discoverability and legibility (less magick moar bettar, IMHO)

But, in short, you can write kts shell scripts; import any library you want, use anything in the JVM or the Kotlin or Java library ecosystem that you need, etc.

Works on the command line (you need a jvm and kotlin installed from your favorite package manager). The Kotlin Jupyter kernel also uses kts and this is a nice way to use Java stuff in jupyter.

- Top-level functions/main is supported - data classes are approximately as good as records - A scripting mode comes built in, and can use annotations to import and use dependencies within the same file - There's a repl - The keyword 'var' exists, and the keyword 'val' is more ergonomic than 'final var'

The only thing I remember missing from the article is the implicit imports which I don't remember Kotlin having. Regardless, I'd reach for Kotlin every time. I think funnily enough Java never fully clicked for me until I started using Kotlin, which in many ways is "Java, except many best practices are on by default".

I use Kotlin scripts (.main.kts) as a replacement for Bash scripts for years.

You can inline dependencies without additional tooling, and Kotlin is still much more expressive than Java.