I ve started with Kotlin a couple of days ago and I m pretty

Question

I ve started with Kotlin a couple of days ago and I m pretty overwhelmed because I don t know ANY Java I ll be using Kotlin at my new job Should I start with Java If so what s the best resource for getting started with Java

Jacob Richards · Answer

Currently building out a web server with Ktor and I m following along with a tutorial extending the tutorial when necessary eg doing upserts with Exposed foreign keys etc

Dominaezzz · Answer

You do not have to start with java unless you re working with a codebase that is mostly java

Jacob Richards · Answer

Right that s what I was hoping at first but the only thing is that they re using Dropwizard and the docs for it are all Java I feel like I m handicapping myself a bit if i don t know some java beforehand and jump into only kotlin

Adam Powell · Answer

what other languages are you familiar with

Dominaezzz · Answer

IMHO the languages aren t too different you should be fine learning Kotlin now and picking java as the need suffices

Jacob Richards · Answer

JavaScript fullstack and Python That totally makes sense I just got a bit worried when trying to read the Dropwizard docs and eventually gave up and decided to use Ktor for developing a web server

Jacob Richards · Answer

thanks for your responses by the way laughing

Adam Powell · Answer

you re probably fine then if you know ES6 and python already Java itself is pretty straightforward but the library ecosystem is known for being baroque

Adam Powell · Answer

especially web libraries and frameworks

serebit · Answer

Going into Kotlin with existing knowledge of Java helps but it isn t necessary to understand the language

Adam Powell · Answer

after reading some of the dropwizard docs here yeah that s exactly the sort of thing I was referring to smile There are good reasons why it s structured the way it is but don t at all feel bad if you don t understand what it s doing from the outset Most of it is a bunch of reflection annotation library magic trying to automate codify domain best practices that the average java expert wouldn t know offhand either

Adam Powell · Answer

Kotlin ktor just get the advantage of being able to autocomplete your way to success due to statically typed dsls powering most of it but you get a lot of the same concepts represented there

Jacob Richards · Answer

ah i see thanks for the info yeah ktor has been really nice but i m going to have to use dropwizard at the new job how would you suggest i learn it despite the fact that the docs are incredibly confusing to me

Jacob Richards · Answer

i ve seen a couple kotlin ports of tutorial projects for DW so I was thinking that might be a good entry point

Jacob Richards · Answer

i don t understand the ecosystem really what s the primary framework folks are using for server side KT right now spring DW ktor

Adam Powell · Answer

I think you d have to ask some others around here my focus is Android and I keep up on some web stuff as a hobby slightly smiling face

Adam Powell · Answer

there s < C0B8RC352|server> that might be helpful

Jacob Richards · Answer

all good thanks so much for your help so far laughing yep joined that one

Adam Powell · Answer

seems like you already found it yeah

Adam Powell · Answer

I like ktor spring boot seems popular and has a strong kotlin following dropwizard looks solid but fundamentally java based which is fine but you might find tying into other ideas like coroutines to be a bit manual

Jacob Richards · Answer

right that s the impression i was getting it s interesting that there aren t really any tuts out there with DW and kotlin i did find ONE article that has you implementing a ridiculously simple API which worked for me but right when I started needing to consume or respond with JSON I was lost hahaha

Jacob Richards · Answer

Jacob Richards · Answer

If I do get deeper into DW I m for sure going to write a tutorial for it bc it s v strange that one doesn t exist for kt

Adam Powell · Answer

teaching is a great way to learn slightly smiling face

Adam Powell · Answer

fwiw even after writing and using ktor adapter plugins myself I still find it more readable to do something like moshi serialization with their kotlin codegen plugin by hand and then keep some plain extension functions around as helpers where needed

Adam Powell · Answer

it s so painful in java and the java community has such envy over dynamic languages parsing support that you end up with a lot of infra and annotation soup to close the gap in code golf competitions