My manager is making me re-write my kotlin api's into Java. Oh My God. #help

# announcements

[Mustafa]

My manager is making me re-write my kotlin api's into Java. Oh My God. #help

[tddmonkey]

why?

[Martin Jinoch]

why???

[Mustafa]

Large corporation. Decided to standardize to make it easier for externals to work on the codebase.

[Martin Jinoch]

tell him your ; key is not working 😉

[Stephan Schroeder]

could it work to sell Kotlin as a better Java?!? Kotlin’s gradual conversion game from Java code is really good. Tell him Kotlin is a sharper axe, that will make you (and the rest of the team) more productive. https://medium.com/@koryteg/become-a-10x-programmer-sharpen-your-axe-bfe9109373bb
The rest of my team -experienced Java devs - are currently switching to Kotlin. They enjoy it very much and it’s not intimidating for them because Kotlin feels like an improvement on Java, not a new language.
Other option: look for a new job 😐 if that’s not possible: 1min of silence for our fallen comrade 😔

[Czar]

Or just try to write Java-compatible API, don't export Kotlin types, when something is not possible to implement in Kotlin in such a way add a class or two in Java.

[Marc Knaup]

Or look for a new job at a company that isn’t afraid of change 🤔

[Czar]

actually the manager's reasoning makes sense, I wouldn't immediately put the blame on...

[Mike]

His reasoning makes sense if you mostly work with contractors. If you mostly work with full-time, then it makes less sense. An experienced programmer/Java programmer can pick up Kotlin quite quickly, and most that you want to work with will be excited to hear you're using Kotlin.

Personally, I think using Kotlin filters out the people that are just trudging through the job, as opposed to those that enjoy, and excel at it.

[Czar]

Yeah, unfortunately in real world what makes sense technically doesn't always make sense on business side of things, especially when dealing with external partners. So I'm giving the company and the manager in question the benefit of the doubt, that's all 🙂

[thanksforallthefish]

oh, I know so many people scared of kotlin (of changes in general) and I can even understand. sometimes I think we forget that coding is a job, we might have fun but there are people that just do it to have a salary. from a company point of view, I can understand restrictions, it makes hiring easier. atm, kotlin is not yet that popular, and while it might be true the average kotlin developer is better than the average java developer, it is also true in a company not everybody needs to be a first violin (lot of time I find myself in some boring maintenance stuff that honestly does not require big skills)

I remember numbers I saw some years ago, a scala developer was 50% expensive than a java developer, why as a company would you want that if the same job can be done with java?

hope you get what I mean

[Mustafa]

haha thanks for the input guys. im looking to change departments to a team thats more flexible while also looking at other options. tbh i miss android development which is why i have been using kotlin for backend to keep the knife sharp.