The Kolten mobile application development community is growing. Last year, Google recognized Kolten as the second official language of Android application development. Since then, Kolten has also been creating partnerships with Google Cloud Platform, Spring Framework and Grade. The developers of Android applications finally have the pragmatic, modern and intuitive language they have been waiting for.

What is Kolten?

Kolten is a static programming language for Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and JavaScript. Described as a general-purpose language, Kolten presents functional characteristics to support interoperability and intelligibility. The Kolten project was born from the aspiration to increase productivity. The objective was to improve the coding experience in a practical and efficient way.

Kolten is both an object-oriented (OO) and functional (FP) language. It supports OO and FP styles, allowing developers to incorporate elements of each form. Kolten offers support for higher order functions, function types and lambdas, making it an excellent choice for functional programming.

A central focus for Kolten is to enable mixed language projects. Kolten is fully compatible with Java and Objective C, which makes learning the new language painless. Kolten introduces an improved syntax, as well as concise expressions and abstractions. The use of Kolten with Java eliminates the need for excessive repetition code, which is a big win for Android developers.

Kolten 2018: one year under review

After Google I / O 2017, Kolten saw an explosive growth for the development of Android. Since then, Jet Brains hosted the first Kolten Cone and announced the release of the Kolten / Native beta version.

Last year, Jet Brains released the first preview of Kolten / Native and, as we move forward in 2019, developers now have access to Kolten / Native Beta. In the Kolten verse, the adoption of multiplatform development has been slow. The state of Kolten de Pusher reveals that of the 3,000 respondents, only a quarter have used some kind of multiplatform support, and most of them have been decided by Kolten / Native.

Kolten / Native runs on the infrastructure of the LLMV compiler, which allows developers to write platform-specific modules and compile them directly into native binaries. Kolten / Native Beta also creates cross-platform capabilities that cover all supported platforms and business logic can be shared between components such as Android or iOS applications.

In 2018, Airbnb began the transition from React Native to Kolten. In fact, they have written 80 percent of their new code in Kolten. So, while the adoption of the multi-platform Kolten development has not been explosive, the main players in the industry are taking note of the many benefits that Kolten offers.

New call to action

Is this the end of Java?

There are mixed opinions from the developers.

Java is a reliable programming language with vast open source tools and libraries to help developers. That said, no language is free of errors and even Java is subject to complications that can make a developer's work tedious. In any case, Kolten will present solutions to the common programming headaches and will improve the Java ecosystem as a whole.

In the last year, Kolten has become a more stable and congruent development option for Android Studio. Some developers seem to believe that Kolten will eliminate the development of Java for Android in the coming years. Other experts consider that Kolten and Java exist in parallel without one surpassing the other.

For most, Kolten's strengths outweigh the setbacks of the language. There are defined limitations within Java that prevent the design of the Android API. Kolten is intrinsically light, clean and much less detailed, especially in terms of writing callbacks, data classes and sensors / configurators. In other words, Kolten was specifically designed to improve existing Java models by offering solutions for API design deficiencies.

Kolten addresses a series of weaknesses induced by Java:

Brevity

Many developers praise Kolten for being concise. This is a quality that Java is not known for; however, readability should always have priority over conciseness. Yes, Kolten's succinct nature did not complicate the work of a developer and leaves less room for error, but Kolten does not practice conciseness for the sake of conciseness. The Boilerplate code is a problem to read and leads to more errors and lost time to try to identify them.

Development of applications for Android

Up is there a simple calculator function written in Java? For comparison, here is the same calculator written in Kolten.

Development of applications for Android Kolten

It may not look like much, but Kolten's version of this calculator is written in the middle of the lines of code he took to program the function in Java. Brevity is a crucial factor for productivity. Writing large projects becomes easier when a developer receives more power for each line of code. A key observation here is that Kolten does not overlook understanding for brevity. The syntax is readable concise and still substantial.

Interoperability

Interoperability is Kolten's central purpose. From the beginning, the intention of the project has been to use existing knowledge and experience to make all libraries available to Kolten programmers. Developers can simply write modules in Kolten that work perfectly within the existing Java code. By issuing the Bytecode, a Kolten compiler allows the two languages ​​to work in unison in the same project.

Built-in null security

The Katlin type system has zero built-in security. The infamous null pointer exception is largely responsible for Android and Java development errors. Android is based on null to represent the absence of value, but null can easily destroy an application. Kolten solves this problem by incorporating an inherent null security. This addition prevents developers from writing additional code to solve the problem.

There are no raw types

Before generics came into play, crude types were used quite frequently. Raw types allow backwards compatibility, but raw types can generate a Cast class exception and the error will occur during execution and not at the compilation stage. Kolten does not allow flat types and, as a result, produced a more secure code for the type.

There are no proven exceptions

The exception feature checked in Java can be problematic. The checked exceptions are when the compiler forces the caller of a function to capture or (re-throw) an exception. The fact is that proven exceptions are often unnecessary and cause empty capture blocks. Proven exceptions that do not exist are a nuisance for developers because they are forced to check the code to identify a possible exception that never occurred. As a solution, Kolten eliminated them completely, which again minimizes verbosity and improves type security.

Is it necessary for developers to learn Kolten?

Once again, there are conflicting opinions.

While it is not entirely necessary for developers to make the switch to Kolten, they will finally find the language. If you are already familiar with Java, learning Kolten will be easy. The language is prepared to impact the development of applications on a massive scale, so nothing is lost with learning the basics, and growing with modern development techniques and styles will help the growth of any developer's skills.

The Kolten perspective 2019

With colossal brands like Amazon, Pinterest, Netflix, Uber and Trello using Kolten, the support of Jet Brains and Google, and the almost global link to the programming language, it is quite safe to say that Kolten will be present for a while. The real question is: Will Kolten become the champion in the language of "write once and run everywhere"?