Launched a few years ago, Kotlin is the second supported language in developing Android apps in Android Studio. Although Java is still at the top, Kotlin keeps growing significantly. The development of the language in the Android developer community is relatively fast. The Android developer community reinforces each other by releasing new tutorials. Also, they keep updating old tutorials for using the language. Therefore, learning Kotlin today will be an added value for a developer like you. Here are the five reasons why we must learn the Android programming language.
1. Learning Kotlin is easy
Its simplicity attracts Android developers. Suppose you can already use the Java language to create Android applications. Then, you won’t have any significant obstacles while learning Kotlin. By using it, we can use existing elements with improvements in certain parts. Writing programs for Android then be enjoyable.
2. Integrated with Android Studio
JetBrains, the company that has developed IntelliJ, the base for Android Studio, developed the language. So it is easy to integrate it with Android Studio.
3. Mature ecosystem
Kotlin has gone through many long stages before entering the stable version 1.0 since 2016. In the end, the Kotlin programming language is already mature. It is stable and suitable for the development stage. There is always a new library to help the process of creating Android applications with Kotlin. And we can still use the existing Java libraries without any problems.
4. Say goodbye to NullPointerException
When building Android apps using Kotlin, the compiler will detect possible errors before building the APK. In this way, we can immediately know where the source can later be problematic in the future. Suppose the part that has the possibility of error is not resolved. In that case, the application will not run, unlike Java, where there is no such check from there. We will know that a part causes NPE when the application is already running and crashes.
5. Not only in Android
You can use Kotlin to build other apps like iOS (via Kotlin Native). You can also use it to write JavaScript (via Kotlin JS). Because Kotlin has 100% interoperability with Java, anything that can use Java can also use Kotlin.