Book Image

Learn Kotlin Programming - Second Edition

By : Stephen Samuel, Stefan Bocutiu
Book Image

Learn Kotlin Programming - Second Edition

By: Stephen Samuel, Stefan Bocutiu

Overview of this book

Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language used for developing cross-platform applications. Complete with a comprehensive introduction and projects covering the full set of Kotlin programming features, this book will take you through the fundamentals of Kotlin and get you up to speed in no time. Learn Kotlin Programming covers the installation, tools, and how to write basic programs in Kotlin. You'll learn how to implement object-oriented programming in Kotlin and easily reuse your program or parts of it. The book explains DSL construction, serialization, null safety aspects, and type parameterization to help you build robust apps. You'll learn how to destructure expressions and write your own. You'll then get to grips with building scalable apps by exploring advanced topics such as testing, concurrency, microservices, coroutines, and Kotlin DSL builders. Furthermore, you'll be introduced to the kotlinx.serialization framework, which is used to persist objects in JSON, Protobuf, and other formats. By the end of this book, you'll be well versed with all the new features in Kotlin and will be able to build robust applications skillfully.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Fundamental Concepts in Kotlin
5
Section 2: Practical Concepts in Kotlin
15
Section 3: Advanced Concepts in Kotlin

Getting Started with Kotlin

It is time to write code. In this chapter, we will go over and write the typical entry code example for every language—the famous Hello World!. In order to do this, we will need to set up the initial environment required to develop software with Kotlin. We will provide a few examples using the compiler from the command line, and then we will look at the typical way of programming using the integrated development environments (IDEs) and build tools available.

Kotlin is a Java virtual machine (JVM) language, and so the compiler will emit Java bytecode. Because of this, naturally, Kotlin code can call Java code, and vice versa! Therefore, you need to have the Java Development Kit (JDK) installed on your machine. To be able to write code for Android, where the most recent supported Java version is 6, the compiler needs to translate your code to bytecode that is at least compatible with Java 6.

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Use the command line to compile and execute code written in Kotlin
  • Use the REPL and write Kotlin scripts
  • Create a Gradle project with Kotlin enabled
  • Create a Maven project with Kotlin enabled
  • Use IntelliJ to create a Kotlin project
  • Use Eclipse IDE to create a Kotlin project
  • Mix Kotlin and Java code in the same project