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

Object-Oriented Programming in Kotlin

Kotlin is an object-oriented programming (OOP) language with support for higher-order functions. If you don't know what higher-order functions mean, then do not worry, as there is, Chapter 5, Higher-Order Functions and Functional Programming, dedicated to them. If you have been using a functional language prior to Kotlin, then you will find many functional programming constructs supported in Kotlin.

Over time, software complexity has increased, and OOP abstraction has allowed us to model problems we have to solve in terms of objects. You can view each object as a minicomputer on its own—it has a state and can perform actions. An object through its available actions exhibits some sort of behavior; therefore, there is a clear analogy between objects/entities and real life.

The first characteristic of an object-oriented abstraction...