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Ways Jetpack Has Helped Android Leapfrog iOS for Developers

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1 pointphilk104 comments

I vastly prefer Swift to Kotlin, the latter of which feels like a knee jerk reaction to Java.

Like someone who was upset they had to write Java for years decided to make a language as overly sweetened as possible and more syntax thank you can shake a stick at (and bringing back gotos as “return@“)

You say "overly sweetened" as a pejorative but I'm curious what is wrong with a language being "too sweet"? Is it because it becomes too complex, too hard to learn? This is definitely what I feel with Groovy, which looks simple on the surface but is actually quite hard to teach to people because there is so much implicit behavior. But then, we're not in kindergarten here, every tool I use is a long term investment so I don't mind that too much if there is payback in the long run.

Kotlin is as much a reaction to Apache Groovy as it is to java. E.g. whereas Groovy did builders, Kotlin did them with static typing.

And "knee-jerk" is inaccurate. Kotlin's business case was considered carefully by Jetbrains, just as Swift's was by Apple.

If you take my comment literally, it doesn’t make sense (how do you have a knee jerk reaction to a language as old as Java?)

If you understand it’s not literal you should be able to see Im not saying it is literally a knee jerk reaction to the language but rather it feels like one.

As in it’s almost as if someone went “I’m going to make the most not stuffy Java stuff language I can with every morsel of syntax I can stuff and add support for DSLs that look nothing like valid code and fuck the ternary operator, just make a disgusting looking assignment from an If/else because breaking the readers flow to parse that is much better than just properly formatting your ternary operator”

Swift has exactly the right amount of syntax and feels like a nuanced attempt at a modern dev friendly language, to Kotlin’s hamfisted behemoth.

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