There would probably need to be a frontend framewo...

# webassembly

[zjuhasz]

There would probably need to be a frontend framework (like react and others) developed along side this WASM support for it to get adopted quickly. Of course there would be community frameworks made down the road if this was adopted but it could take a very long time.

[napperley]

Don't think that developing a front-end lib/toolkit/framework would take too long to develop. Its not like a new programming language/OS where it would take many years to have a stable/usable product.

[sdeleuze]

I also think that if JetBrains provides a good platform, an healthy and dynamic frontend ecosystem will quickly arise.

[gbaldeck]

this is a great idea. having a JetBrains backed framework for the frontend, whether in Kotlin/JS or through Kotlin compiled to WASM, would really help to get kotlin's foot in the door in the frontend realm. one of the main reasons I see Kotlin not being a major frontend player right now is because there is no JetBrains backed framework where kotlin is the 1st class language

[sdeleuze]

By platform I mean the language side, the web framework could (should) come from the community.

[gbaldeck]

That would be great if it did, but there was no community supported framework for the backend, so JetBrains created ktor. They could do something similar for the frontend

[gbaldeck]

If you look at the frontend, there are very few frameworks that are community supported that have lasted, Angular is backed by Google, react is baced by Facebook, Vue has contributions from many different companies

[sdeleuze]

Community includes other companies

[sdeleuze]

JetBrains has already a lot to do on WebASM and this kind of stuff

[gbaldeck]

Right, my point was that those companies have teams that are paid to work those frameworks

[sdeleuze]

If they need to make choices, I would prefer to have a real team on that and let other taking care of the framework side

[sdeleuze]

Yes and if front end become a real thing on Kotlin we could see the same for Kotlin front end

[sdeleuze]

Currently this is not a proper platform so no company will build anything on top of that

[sdeleuze]

If JetBrains have the resources, fine, I would be happy to see a frontend framework from them

[sdeleuze]

But I don't think that will be necessary

[zjuhasz]

But we don't see many examples of major first party frameworks being written in pure Kotlin yet by anyone but Jetbrains. Pretty much all we've gotten is Kotlin support being added to existing stuff (Android, Gradle, Spring) and then pure Kotlin libraries are being slowly built up by the community, or slowly transitioning from a wrapper to a pure Kotlin multiplatform project like kotlin-logging

[gbaldeck]

agreed, ktor is jetbrains, exposed is jetbrains. tornadofx is completely community driven, which is nice

[zjuhasz]

Yeah but again it is a kotlin wrapper for an existing framework

[zjuhasz]

tornadofx

[gbaldeck]

oh thats right, its a dsl over javafx

[zjuhasz]

the closest thing that comes to mind is kotlintest

[zjuhasz]

But it came several years after spek I think

[zjuhasz]

and spek was Jetbrains

[zjuhasz]

But spek is a good example of how this could work. It was started at Jetbrains and transitioned to being largely community maintained over time. Although I believe Jetbrains people still play a major role.

[gbaldeck]

the react wrappers followed the same kind of process, but, like you mentioned, they arent a framework that provides 1st class support for kotlin

[zjuhasz]

Technically since Kotlin is completely open source this whole thing could be done by another company through contributions or at least taken to the point where the Kotling team had to explicitly reject the concept of first class WASM web api support. For example the the Arrow people are working on adding typeclasses to Kotlin, including doing the compiler additions and everything. I just don't think it's very likely another company will do this with such a large project.

[zjuhasz]

Speaking of which Arrow is another example of a third party pure kotlin framework

[napperley]

Even though TornadoFX is a wrapper on a existing framework it provides a lot of added value (technical/business wise) and should be included as a source of inspiration for developing a major Kotlin Front-end Web lib/toolkit/framework, where there is heavy collaboration/development between the Kotlin Community and JB.