Which features attract you to use Kotlin?

# getting-started

[Kevin Huang]

Which features attract you to use Kotlin?

[Kevin Huang]

I like coroutines.

[seizma]

closures like in functional languages, native compiler, tail call optimisation

[Konstantin Petrukhnov]

Shared code between jvm and ios (combination of performance and ease of use).

[yen]

The ability to declare functions outside of classes. I mean come on Java

[Spike Baylor]

Honestly my favorite "feature" is that i seem to find myself thinking "oh man i have to do X small yet annoying thing" just to find out "oh no i don't, theres an ext function for that!"

Also TornadoFX is fun.

[Chris Cunningham]

that its not java and can be used in the same places

[Chris Cunningham]

loose functions, closures

[Chris Cunningham]

extension methods

[Spike Baylor]

the combination of extension functions, ext functs with receiver, lambdas, and what i thought was a weird feature of putting the last function parameter on the outside of the () inside of {} instead

...that come together to make the various DSLs is quite nice.

[Chris Cunningham]

yeah i still find that one odd

[Spike Baylor]

It's one of those things that sounds really arbitrary and useless until you see it in action. So if you've used .apply {} or .let {} or any of the DSLs like tornadofx or ktor it starts to click.

[Nikky]

combine that with extension functions with receiver object inside your DSL objects/class and you get the power of the DSL, you can quite possibly model any arbitrarir nested configuration in a typesafe and readable way

[Nikky]

then add generics to the receivers and you get somewhere

[Nikky]

i should probably make some sample that showcases what i mean

[Chris Cunningham]

yeah only starting to do stuff with a DSL now

[Chris Cunningham]

but before then, it seems like extra syntax for no reason

[Chris Cunningham]

i kinda feel the same about the implicit it in lambda expressions as well

[Kevin Huang]

But kotlin need remember more things then java.

[Nikky]

do you mean when writing kotlin or the kotlin compiler ?

[Sylvain Moindron]

data class, null safety, less verbose code