why Kotlin decided to have data type to be specified after variable name? this has some limitations,...

# getting-started

[Alexey Anufriev]

why Kotlin decided to have data type to be specified after variable name?
this has some limitations, for example code completion

with java IDEA suggests you a variable name based on the type, but in Kotlin type is unknown at the moment when variable name is specified..

[Robert Jaros]

with Kotlin IDEA often suggests type based on variable name

[ilya.gorbunov]

IDEA suggests to complete both variable name and type based on first several chars of its name.

[Tobias Berger]

This order also has benefits.
• the name is usually more important than the type
• names start in the same code column, so it's easier to read a list of all variables
• if your declaration starts with long type (happens quickly with generics) this would sort of hide the actually interesting name
• in many cases the explicit type declaration can be omitted, which would lead to inconsistencies in you code if type declaration came first.

[Matteo Mirk]

Also worth saying for historical reasons that this type placement decision has been influenced by Scala.

[nschulzke]

In addition to what's been said (esp. the name being more important than the type), I also find the order helpful because I switch back and forth between Kotlin and Typescript. It's easier to come back to Kotlin after a while on the front end because the typing syntax is so similar.

[jordigarcl]

Type inference, which I say makes it worth it

[elizarov]

https://medium.com/@elizarov/types-are-moving-to-the-right-22c0ef31dd4a

[Alexey Anufriev]

thank you guys for explanation, pretty clear now.. but still, how name completion works in this case?

having Java I type:
MyClass then just ctrl+space and IDEA suggest myClass as var name..

but with Kotlin:
var .. and then happens nothing, right?

so type inference is a price paid for names autocompletion..

[nschulzke]

If I type var s into IntelliJ and hit Ctrl+Space, I get suggested to me names based on every single class starting with s (beginning with string and going on down into less frequent names).

[Alexey Anufriev]

isn't that too excessive?

[TJ Olsen]

I’ll trade auto completing a name based on type for readability any day. Also, there are more instances where an IDE will suggest a poor name than there are it will suggest a good name.

For example, how often do you want to name a variable string or int? That doesn’t describe what it does at all. Trying to understand when the auto suggested names are really that helpful?

But I also do a lot of iOS. Switching back and forth from Kotlin and Swift is so much nicer than Swift and Java. 😂

That’s personal though ha.