Out of professional curiosity, does anyone know why the Kotlin team went with val/var as opposed to ...

# kontributors

[adam-mcneilly]

Out of professional curiosity, does anyone know why the Kotlin team went with val/var as opposed to const/let naming conventions? I know the difference between the two, but someone asked me if I happened to know the reason behind the naming and I didn't. Nor am I sure there was an explicit reason but I thought I'd ask.

[LeoColman]

Not sure. I personally would hate to wite const/let

[LeoColman]

A wild guess is that maybe var/val have the same amount of leters, while const/let don't? this hels with aligning code and making it prettier-ish

[Dico]

Yeah, I dont think const and let are the right keywords. Imagine writing kotlin but with const everywhere you have val. Sounds horrible to me.

[adam-mcneilly]

I definitely agree! Truly was just professional curiosity haha

[adam-mcneilly]

My guess after thinking about this for a day is basically the same as Leonardo: it just reads better. Both stylistically being three letters, but var/val matching to variable/value is quite clear. const may be clear but what the hell is let with respect to a property honestly

[Dico]

Logic to Kotlin!

[dmitry.petrov]

I don't speak for the team, however, using let for mutable variables goes against my ML intuition :)

[elizarov]

fun, var, val — aligns nicely, reads nicely (there was an official story somewhere from Andrey Breslav, but I cannot find it now)