Customer is King, We all have heard of this phrase now and then, but entrepreneurs today follow this mantra by heart and soul.

Why you ask?

Well, they understand the need to compete with creativity that not only draws attention towards potential customers, but fulfil the ultimate goal of business and i.e REVENUE. Further, taking the evolution of App Development into consideration business today have embraced mobile app practices to increase their customer base numbers. With a striking figure of 86.8% share, Android OS rules the mobile app development market. Clearly portraying that why organizations need to focus on Android App Development in their structure. 

(Source: IDC.com)

Customers today look for apps that are easy to use. An app that saves their time, and can easily be handled. Java have been the primary language for app development for a very long time now. But with the advancement in modern development language their is a new bee in town – Kotlin. 

Kotlin is a programming language for java virtual machine and JavaScript.

So now the question arrives – Java Vs. Kotlin which one is a better option? To solve this dilemma here is a detailed guide that would enlighten you about points like:

• Kotlin vs java which is better?
• How switching from java to Kotlin helpful for the app developers?
• What is in future of java and kotlin?

Do you Know?

“Java is over 20 years old and was made by accident. In the year 1992, James Gosling was working at the sun labs. The team was constructing a set top box which was started up with the cleaning up of C++, and they all came out with new language – Java” 

Kotlin vs Java web development: A Brief Introduction

Java

An object-oriented programming language created by James Gosling, Java is one of the oldest and second most active language on Git Hub. Owned by Oracle, Java was the only language that was officially supported by Google for android app development until 2017. The language was designed with the properties that involved:

• Automatic Memory Management: Java tends to manage allocation and de-allocation of new objects.It contains a program that is known as the garbage collector. The function of this program is to collect unused memory location that helps in improving the performance.

• Platform Independent: Java is one of those languages that runs on all available operating systems.It use java virtual machine as abstract and does not operate the operating system directly. 

• It is a Multi-Threaded Language: Multi-Threaded program are one of those programs which consists of multiple flow of controls: i.e threads. In other words there should be n numbers of sub programs. Java is one of those languages that consists of n number of foreground threads. 

• A distributed Service: Java is considered to be a distributed service. A service that allows n number of client to access across the globe. It tends to compile onto one machine and then easily gets transferred to another machine for execution.

• Highly Robust: Java is one of those languages that is both a compiler as well as a interpreter. This makes the language highly robust and reliable. It puts a lot of emphasis on early checking of the codes to figure out the errors and exceptions. 

• It has a Rich API: Java language consists of rich API. It has been providing the developers with XML parsing, networking, database connections and many other functions. 

• Exceptionally “well-to-do” community: One of the biggest advantages of java is its strong and thriving community. It has lots of active forums that tends to help all the developers ( from beginners to advanced) 

Kotlin

Emerging out as one of the most rapidly adopted language, Kotlin is now considered as the official language for Android App Development ( declared in I/O 2017) supported by Google. Created by JetBrains, the programming language is based upon Java Virtual machine. It is completely interoperable with java and its functional features. Hence introducing the developers with modern development qualities. Some of the key features that makes Kotlin a good choice for developers would be:

• Has a Good Support of Functional Programming: Functional programming has the ability to let developers solve tasks easily and continuously. This tends to improve the performance via inclining. 

• It is Multi-Platform: Kotlin was created to keep JVM is mind. This was done to make the programming language reliable for any device that tends to run JVM in its system. The developers would be glad to learn that front-end development bis possible using Kotlin, and thus it is basically open to any platform. 

• Smart Compiler: One of the main goal of the team was to create a programming language that has an exceptionally good compiler capabilities. Kotlin is one such language that easily detects errors at compile time which tends to eliminate the possibilities of errors and bugs.

• The codes remains safe: If we have a comparison between kotlin and java codes, then the point has to be given to kotlin. The codes that are there in kotlin are considered really safe because the language prevents common programming mistakes that results in fewer application failures and system crashes.  

• Easy to maintain: The developers have the freedom to use “already tested” and “tried” development tools that they are comfortable with. Thus, this makes it really easy to maintain. 

• Provides NULL safety: Kotlin has introduced the developers with concept of nullable and non-nullable variables. It aims to remove the null-pointers from the code that was not possible in java. Thus, making it even more desirable.

• Growing Community: Kotlin has brought together a great community for the developers that share their knowledge in the forum. With people adopting more and more kotlin, introduction of online courses, books and tutorials has been granted. 

• Supports Android Studio: Kotlin has granted its users with one of the greatest advantage and i.e project set-up. Developers can easily set up projects in less than 10 minutes. Astonishing right? Well, its kotlin. 

Comparing Java Vs. Kotlin

According to Github 2018 Octoverse report the number of kotlin users doubled from the past year making it one of the fastest growing programming language.

The reason why kotlin is widely being use in today’s era may be because of these reasons:

How switching from java to Kotlin helpful for the app developers?

In this battle of kotlin and java, one is the experienced one that has served the app developers from past two decades now. On the other hand there is this modern language that has specially been constructed to make the task of the developer easy. If we take the comparison and the features into account then yes kotlin has an upper hand over java. 

• Kotlin is the modern introduction to the older java. The classes of both the languages can be written simultaneously not demanding the user to start a new project.  

• Kotlin is a flexible language. It is operable with java. The codes can be combined perfectly without any hassle. 

• Kotlin consists of maximum java libraries.

• When it comes to Android support, Kotlin has an excellent uphold on Anroid studio making it easy to configure the plugins in the project. 

Marking the Future: Which is better kotlin or java in 2020

When considering all the pit fulls of java, especially with the Null Pointer Exceptions that has bugged android developers from the very beginning – the future of kotlin is quite bright. However java is still considered as an essential language for android developers. In the coming future we vividly see kotlin providing the user with:

• Chat bots – It would represent 1/4^th of the service operation in 2020
• Block-chain seems to expand with exceptionally good transformation in mobile computing
• With Google rolling out new dynamics to the delivery model, storage spaces on devices would see a major transition. 

In the nutshell

The App developers and the team are quite familiar with the concept of java and kotlin, and after this write up we hope you are even more clear on the selection of your programming language. The need of Android app developers now is even more intensive t

han the previous years. 

With more and more languages being introduced to the developers the need to hire mobile App developers to future proof the app development is more important than ever before. The best thing about kotlin is that even if you hire java developer, he/she would easily adapt to the kotlin environment.

That is the beauty of evolution. If you have any suggestions or doubts about the relative topic then you can leave your review on the comment section.