My Next Language: Kotlin

In my mysterious day job, I write mainly in PHP and Javascript, but I've always had a secret love for Java. Maybe it is because it's my first language, maybe because my brain works well with strongly typed languages... but I'll have to think thought why more. Over the weekend I had a programmer friend of mine pitch the coolness of Kotlin to me. The very much shortened version of his pitch was like Java, but better.

I sat down and started reading about Kotlin and got quite excited. Not sure when I'll sit down and give an in-depth review, but I wanted to share how impressed I was with https://try.kotlinlang.org.

A few things immediately stuck out to me. While it has the self-assessing programming challenges called "Koans", it starts with a whole slew of manipulatable examples and syntax walkthroughs to get you to the point where you can actually know enough to work on the later challenges. Like most online IDEs you can save your work, and even share publicly when you have something worthy of showing off. Finally, they have a link to Advent of Code right in their App. If I was their target audience, they are certainly succeeding.

I look forward to learning Kotlin and sharing what I know with my readers. Until then, let me direct you toward fellow Steemer, @tensor, and his excellent tutorials on Kotlin. If you have any questions or comments, please send me a reply.