Language of the Month: Kotlin
Kotlin is a general-purpose language intended for industrial use. In particular, JetBrains plans to use it in the production of IntelliJ IDEA and other projects. The core motivation behind this project is the obvious need for a modern language for JVM. This need is evidenced by the fact that many developers and organizations are looking for an alternative to Java. Three new JVM languages backed by well-known industry leaders were announced during the last year, which suggests that many people are not satisfied with the existing alternatives.
Our goal with Kotlin is to create a language that is 100% Java-compatible, safer than Java, more concise and more flexible, and not overly complex.
Another important consideration is keeping compilation speed and IDE support on a level comparable to those in Java. These last two points may seem like insignificant technicalities, but our experience has shown that they do impose certain constraints on the language design. [read on].
Other Kotlin Resources at Dr. Dobb's
Writing Kotlin Code Screencast
JetBrains' Andrey Breslav using IntelliJ IDEA to write Kotlin code.
The Kotlin Programming Language
Video presentation from the 2011 JVM Summit.
Presentation Slides
Presentation slides for JetBrain's new statically typed JVM language, Kotlin, from the JVM Language Summit 2011.
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