Kotlin for Java Developers

Kotlin is a concise and expressive programming language developed by JetBrains the company behind IntelliJ IDEA. Kotlin runs on the JVM and integrates with existing Java code making the move from Java relatively smooth.

There are a lot of things in common between Kotlin and Java for example both are statically-typed, object-oriented, use generics, etc however there are some features of Kotlin that make it a nice alternative to Java.

Java to Kotlin series is an introduction to some of Kotlin’s features for Java developers.

• Kotlin syntax - Kotlin’s concise and expressive syntax.
• Null safety - avoid a whole class of errors by avoiding nulls or making them more explicit.
• Coroutines - Kotlin’s take on asynchronous programming.
• Extension functions - add methods to existing classes without directly modifying the class.
• Operator overloading - define custom behaviour for operators like +, [], etc.
• Reified generics - access type parameters at runtime.