Kotlin and Java Development

Kotlin : statically typed programming language that runs on the Java virtual machine and also can be compiled to JavaScript source code or use the LLVM compiler infrastructure. Its primary development is from a team of JetBrains programmers based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. While the syntax is not compatible with Java, the JVM implementation of the Kotlin standard library is designed to interoperate with Java code and is reliant on Java code from the existing Java Class Library, such as the collections framework. Kotlin uses aggressive type inference to determine the type of values and expressions for which type has been left unstated. This reduces language verbosity relative to Java, which demands often entirely redundant type specifications prior to version 10.

As of Android Studio 3.0 (released in October 2017), Kotlin is fully supported by Google for use with their Android operating system,and is directly included in the IDE's installation package as an alternative to the standard Java compiler. The Android Kotlin compiler lets the user choose between targeting Java 6, Java 7, or Java 8- compatible bytecode.

In July 2011, JetBrains unveiled Project Kotlin, a new language for the JVM, which had been under development for a year.[6] JetBrains lead Dmitry Jemerov said that most languages did not have the features they were looking for, with the exception of Scala. However, he cited the slow compile time of Scala as an obvious deficiency.[6] One of the stated goals of Kotlin is to compile as quickly as Java. In February 2012, JetBrains open sourced the project under the Apache 2 license

The name comes from Kotlin Island, near St. Petersburg. Andrey Breslav mentioned that the team decided to name it after an island just like Java was named after the Indonesian island of Java (though the programming language Java was perhaps named after the coffee.

JetBrains hopes that the new language will drive IntelliJ IDEA sales.

Kotlin v1.0 was released on February 15, 2016. This is considered to be the first officially stable release and JetBrains has committed to long-term backwards compatibility starting with this version.

At Google I/O 2017, Google announced first-class support for Kotlin on Android.

Kotlin v1.2 was released on November 28, 2017. Sharing code between JVM and Javascript platforms feature was newly added to this release.

Java : is a general-purpose computer-programming language that is concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, and specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers "write once, run anywhere" (WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation.Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture. As of 2016, Java is one of the most popular programming languages in use, particularly for client-server web applications, with a reported 9

million developers. Java was originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems(which has since been acquired by Oracle Corporation) and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++, but it has fewer low-level facilities than either of them.

The original and reference implementation Java compilers, virtual machines, and class libraries were originally released by Sun under proprietary licenses. As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, Sun relicensed most of its Java technologies under the GNU General Public License. Others have also developed alternative implementations of these Sun technologies, such as the GNU Compiler for Java (bytecode compiler), GNU Classpath (standard libraries), and IcedTea-Web (browser plugin for applets).

The latest version is Java 11, released on September 25, 2018, which follows Java 10 after only six months in line with the new release schedule. Java 8 is still supported but there will be no more security updates for Java 9.Versions earlier than Java 8 are supported by companies on a commercial basis; e.g. by Oracle back to Java 6 as of October 2017 (while they still "highly recommend that you uninstall" pre-Java 8 from at least Windows computers).