Kotlin: About

Kotlin

Kotlin is a programming language introduced by JetBrains and first appearing in 2011. JetBrains is a software development company that offers an extended family of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) for a wide variety of programming languages including Java, Kotlin, Ruby, Python, PHP, Objective-C, C++, C#, Go, SQL, and JavaScript. InfoWorld magazine awarded the firm "Technology of the Year Award" in 2011 and 2015.

Kotlin is a general-purpose, strongly statically typed language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In 2017, Google announced Kotlin is an official language for android development. Kotlin is an open source programming language that combines functional features and object-oriented programming. It is said Kotlin reduces lines of code by approximately 40% compared to Java.

Kotlin was influenced by Java, Scala, Groovy, C#, JavaScript and Gosu and can be run from any Java IDE or command line.

According to Jetbrains blog, Kotlin is used by Amazon Web Services, Pinterest, Coursera, Netflix, Uber, Square, Trello, Basecamp, and others. Corda, a distributed ledger developed by a consortium of well-known banks (such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, UBS, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Société Générale), has over 90% Kotlin in its codebase. According to Google, Kotlin has already been adopted by several major developers — Expedia, Flipboard, Pinterest, Square, and others — for their Android production apps.