July 31, 2021

Programmingempire

In general, there are many features of Kotlin that will motivate you to adopt Kotlin as the programming language in Android development. Evidently, in 2017 Google announced its support of Kotlin as the language to develop Android apps. Since then along with Java Kotlin has been used in Android development. In fact, you need to write fewer lines of code for developing same functionality as required with Java.

Features of Kotlin

The following features of Kotlin make it a preferred programming language for app development with Android.

Statically-typed Language

Like Java, and C++, Kotlin is also a statically-typed language that performs type-checking at compile time. Moreover, it has features of both object-oriented programming as well as functional-programming.

Open-Source

Being an open-source language help developer to get started with Kotlin easily.

Robustness

Kotlin is a robust language and have fewer run-time crashes. In fact, you can easily identify where the NullPointerException can occur. Moreover, there are features in Kotlin that help in working with null values.

Reliable

Since we can avoid null pointer exceptions easily in Kotlin, it makes it more reliable. Basically, we can have null safe functions. Also, it is easier to debug a Kotlin application.

Data Classes

In order to hold the data of application, we create data classes that don’t have any other functionality. Hence, a data class has only state and it doesn’t perform any operation. Because of data classes in Kotlin we can have self-generated code that makes application development faster.

Extensions

In fact, we can add more functionality to existing classes in Kotlin by using extensions. Therefore, we can create additional functions for an existing class.

Lazy Functionality

In fact, Kotlin has Lazy-Loading features. It means, Kotlin doesn’t initialize variables till their request arises. Once, it initializes variables, these variables are maintained till they are being used.

Smart Cast Functions

Basically, the Kotlin compiler keeps track of if conditional expressions using smart cast. In fact, it is another way of providing null safety to an application. In this case, kotlin compiler allows us to access the variable, if it is not null.

Interoperability with Java

Another important feature of Kotlin is that, the Kotlin and Java have interoperability. Moreover, it has JVM support and can also operate with Java libraries. Hence, the Kotlin code can make use of Java functions and vice versa.

Kotlin has a Concise Syntax

Since, the code written in Kotlin is more concise, it improves the readability, and maintainability of the code.