Is Kotlin influenced by Swift?

# announcements

[sxtanna]

Is Kotlin influenced by Swift?

[gildor]

Kotlin first public appearance - 2011
Swift public release - 2014

But development of both of them started almost at the same time:
Swift - First commit 18 July 2010
Kotlin - First commit 8 Nov 2010

[gildor]

Proofs
https://github.com/apple/swift/commits/master?after=9e8d0aea8167ee7ae2344c9ecb7fc9f38da456ac+62124
https://github.com/JetBrains/Kotlin/commits/master?after=5252cd4da46bbfa8bb7412ffde8352fd0acb286e+42979

[Czar]

There is no isolation in modern world, everyone and everything is influenced by everyone and everything else.

[sxtanna]

That's a major stretch @Czar

[Czar]

Maybe, but I believe in that :)

[sxtanna]

But does it definitely apply to this?

[sxtanna]

Someone wants to know.. lol

[edwardwongtl]

I won't say Kotlin is influenced by Swift, but maybe other language like C#

[edwardwongtl]

Swift is just published earlier than Kotlin, but it has nothing to influence Kotlin though

[gildor]

@edwardwongtl Swift published later than Kotlin. Swift official release is 2014

[edwardwongtl]

Oops, my bad

[Czar]

I'm getting in philosophy here, but really influence is a very broad term, and it can be both "positive" (Kotlin borrows something) and "negative" (Kotlin does something to avoid/rectify/solve/reverse some other language's problem). That's why I'm saying that a lot of stuff influenced Kotlin.
I have no doubt that designers of Kotlin have had at least some experience or knowledge of other languages, concepts and technologies, and all that gave them perspective, understanding and ideas about how to design Kotlin.
If by "influenced" OP means borrowing concepts, then I'd say Kotlin wasn't "influenced" by Swift, at the point where information about Swift was published, core Kotlin concepts were already formulated. A lot of other stuff did "influence" Kotlin though, one of the major contributors in this regard is probably C# as was mentioned on numerous occasions by Kotlin developers.

[Joe]

The way I have been describing Swift and Kotlin to people is like this: you give the same set of specs to two different teams. They both work toward the same set of goals (learn from the pitfalls and mistakes of past languages to develop something easier to read and learn), so they end up with some very similar elements. On the other hand, they are mostly looking backward at the problems (and advantages) of their ancestor languages (Obj-C on one side, Java/C# on the other), so of course they end up with different priorities and ideas about what is “better”.