Kotlin Programming Language is the New Favorite to Google
It is that time of the year when tech enthusiasts keep their eye on announcements that come straight from Google headquarters after every Google I/O event. Just like every year, this year’s affair was glorious, impressive, tech-centered, and everything in between.
Google keeps some announcement as a surprise every year that steals the show from every other remark made in the event. And this year’s surprise element was to give more weightage to Kotlin programming language for coding Android applications. Being said that it is nothing like Java is going to end anytime soon. But yes, Kotlin will be an important figure in Android application development circles after Google’s official announcement.
With this announcement, it is clear that the search giant is going to prioritize Kotlin when introducing new features for Android developers.
After Google has favored Kotlin as the preferred language for Android app development, the language has an additional advantage of being the first to benefit from Google’s Android Jetpack. The Jetpack is a collection of libraries and tools created for developing high-quality apps while simplifying the procedure for the developer.
Android Jetpack thus:
- Accelerates app development
- Manages tedious activity like navigation, background task, and more
- Helps develop robust Android apps
While writing about the announcement, Google developer advocate Chet Haase jotted, “Today we’re announcing another big step: Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first. Many new Jetpack APIs and features will be offered first in.”
He continued with the announcement by writing, “If you’re starting a new project, you should write it in Kotlin; code written in Kotlin often mean much less code for you-less code to type, test, and maintain.”
He added, “Our top developers loved it already, and since then, it’s amazing how fast it’s grown, over 50% of professional Android developers now use Kotlin, it’s been one of the most-loved languages two years running on Stack Overflow, and one of the fastest-growing on GitHub in number of contributors.”
The notion behind adopting Kotlin as the favored programming language is to ease the development procedure for the developers. Kotlin as a programming language has all the necessary components that make it a prominent coding language. Being a modern alternative to Java that is easy to learn, Kotlin is the only JVM-targeted language that got popularity among developers quite easily.
Kotlin
Kotlin was announced as a support language for Android. Right from its announcement, the language and its popularity among the developers have grown quite fast. More than 50% of Android developer love using Kotlin in the coding, the popularity of which is growing fast. The programming language is also one of the fastest growing on Github.
After Google I/O announcement of favoring Kotlin, Android application development will now become Kotlin first, meaning new Jetpack APIs will be offered first in Kotlin.
Developers who write in Kotlin need less code to type, test, and maintain. Moreover, new investments are being made in Kotlin with advanced tools, docs, training, and events to make it easier to use and learn.
Final Take On the Announcement
Although Google’s announcement is going to affect Java but its importance as a development language is not going to mitigate easily. Java will remain a prominent programming language because of the huge amount of Android legacy code. And moreover, there is no sign from Google that the search giant will stop supporting Java for Android development.
Google has also made some additional announcements that suggest the company in partnership with JetBrains is going to release new Kotlin training courses. To conclude the event some additional announcements were also made regarding new Android JetPack libraries CameraX, new architecture components and Jetpack Compose.
