At the Google I/O 2019 conference, the company announced in its developer blog that the programming language Kotlin is now the preferred language for developing applications for its mobile operating system, which means it will receive primary support from the company across all tools, components, and APIs compared to other languages. “Android development will increasingly focus on Kotlin,” writes Google in the announcement. “Many new APIs and Jetpack components will be offered first for Kotlin. If you're starting a new project, you should write it in Kotlin. Code written in Kotlin often means much less code for you in terms of both input and testing, as well as maintenance.”
Just two years ago, at the I/O 2017 conference, Google first announced support for Kotlin in its IDE—Android Studio. This was a surprise, considering that for a long time, Java remained the preferred language for Android app development. Only a few announcements at that conference received more applause. Over the past two years, the popularity of Kotlin has only increased. According to Google, over 50% of professional Android developers use this language for developing their applications, and in the latest Stack Overflow developer survey, it is ranked as the fourth most popular programming language in the world.
And it seems that Google has now found a reason to increase its support for Kotlin. “We announce that the next big step we are taking is that Kotlin will become our first,” said Chet Haase, engineer on the Android UI Toolkit development team at Google.
“We understand that not everyone is using Kotlin yet, but we believe you should give it a try,” Haase continues. “You may have compelling reasons to still use programming languages C++ and Java, and that’s perfectly fine. They aren’t going anywhere.”
It is worth noting that Kotlin was developed by JetBrains, a company founded by our compatriots with offices in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. Thus, Kotlin can largely be considered a domestic development that has achieved global recognition. We congratulate the JetBrains team on this success and wish them further fruitful development.
It is worth noting that Kotlin was developed by JetBrains, a company founded by our countrymen, with offices in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. Therefore, Kotlin can largely be considered a domestic development that has achieved global recognition. We extend our congratulations to the JetBrains team on this success and wish them continued fruitful development.
