Kotlin is a JVM language that is becoming increasingly popular for building server-side applications. In this post, we'll take a look at why Kotlin is a great choice for server-side development, and we'll see how to get started with building Kotlin applications.
There are many reasons why Kotlin is a great choice for server-side development. First, Kotlin is a very concise language, which can lead to more readable and maintainable code. Second, Kotlin has great tooling support, including excellent IDEA support and a growing number of Kotlin-specific libraries. Finally, Kotlin is interoperable with Java, so you can easily use existing Java libraries in your Kotlin code.
To get started with Kotlin, you'll need to install the Kotlin plugin for IDEA. Once you've done that, you can create a new Kotlin project in IDEA.
Once you've created a new Kotlin project, you can start adding Kotlin code. Kotlin code can be added to existing Java files, or you can create new Kotlin files. Kotlin files have the extension ".kt".
Kotlin has a very concise syntax, which can lead to more readable code. For example, the following Kotlin code:
val foo = "foo"
is equivalent to the following Java code:
String foo = "foo";
Kotlin also has some language features that Java doesn't have, such as null-safety and lambdas.
Kotlin has a growing number of Kotlin-specific libraries, which can make development easier. For example, the kotlin-logging library provides an easy-to-use logging API for Kotlin.
Kotlin is interoperable with Java, so you can easily use existing Java libraries in your Kotlin code. For example, you can use the Spring Framework in a Kotlin-based application.
In this post, we've seen why Kotlin is a great choice for server-side development. We've also seen how to get started with Kotlin, and we've looked at some of the Kotlin language features and libraries that make development easier.