Aloha, friends. I'm somewhat new to Kotlin and abs...

# announcements

[Michael Wilson]

Aloha, friends. I'm somewhat new to Kotlin and absolutely loving it. I've been working in Java, Go, and the various Cs for years. I get so much more done.

But, I have a question, and I'm not hoping for a sales pitch, but an honest evaluation.

I working with some others on an open source, non-profit project. It's an api and a set of consumer apps centered around open science and environmental conservation. It looks like we'll have some funding for a core team, but I wanted to make the entry easy for the open source community to get involved.

I'd really love to use Kotlin, as we could share a lot of the core logic between Android, Native, Server, and Devops. But, I'm not sure if there are enough Kotliners out there to have an impact on an open source project. My other alternative is to cobble together PHP, Ruby, Cordova, etc, which I really don't want to do.

Does anyone else have experience with this kind of decision? Is it too hard to find kotliners for open source projects? I know its a pretty low learning curve, but it still exists. Is the brevity and code reuse worth the trade-off of a limited talent pool?

Really appreciate any feedback.

[Travis]

It’s a tradeoff you have to decide to make. What’s most important to you about this project?

[juliocbcotta]

Does the project has a github or page already?

[Michael Wilson]

@juliocbcotta No, everything has been done locally. We have it on schedule the first week of the new year to launch a website and post our first code.

[Michael Wilson]

@Travis That's a really great question. I guess the most important thing to me is quality and rapid development. There's some excitement about it from partners (sponsors), but I want it to be the highest quality.

The other thing is that I am a backend / data guy. I can't make a non-bootstrap ui to save my life, so I want to make it easier for those who are skilled in those areas to get involved.

[Travis]

Asked another way, Do you think it’d be better or easier to understand were it a cobbled together PHP/Ruby/Cordova app, or all Kotlin?

[Michael Wilson]

I feel like the quality, readability, and architecture would be much more solid if it were (mostly) in kotlin. And, with the ability to share modules, it would be easier to develop rapidly and safely. If I can cobble together a team.

That's a really insightful question. I'll have to think about it some more.

[Travis]

That’s the tradeoff, what’s your timeline? FWIW, If you have a project that noone wants to contribute to, it doesn’t matter what language choices you’ve made 🙂

[Travis]

well, until it does, because you’re the only one contributing, so you’d have hopefully chosen something you like

[Travis]

🙂

[Michael Wilson]

That's a fair point. And, as I'm thinking through it, there are some parts that are prime for open source and others that I doubt will garner a lot of attention.

It's basically an ETL and data analysis engine that exposes its reports through a very simple API, and then a consumer app that reads those reports (with fun pictures and badges and such).

The idea is that you can scan a consumer item and get back an idea of its environmental impact, if its recyclable, ways to reduce or reuse, etc.

[cedric]

@Michael Wilson The talent pool is much bigger than you think. Potentially, all Java developers or if you want to be more accurate, all Java developers who’d like to develop in Kotlin (which is a subset, but a subset of a huge population, so still sizable)

[cedric]

As for making a case, pick a performance sensitive task, write a quick prototype in PHP, Ruby and Kotlin and run the numbers…

[kenkyee]

The other question is what you think you could share might not be what you can share.
And it might be faster to do it using other tools or frameworks..

[Michael Wilson]

Yeah, I appreciate the discussion. I think that going with a simple api in PHP or Ruby just makes sense.