Transitioning from Java

Kotlin as a programming language was developed by JetBrains, a software company known for software development tools such as IntelliJ IDEA. The project started in 2010 and it aimed to create a language that is compatible with Java but with improvements over some of the drawbacks of Java. The name Kotlin comes from Kotlin Island in the Baltic Sea near St. Petersburg, Russia.

Kotlin 1.0 was released in July 2011 with features such as null safety, static typing, and type inference. It started to gain popularity in 2016 when it introduced features such as 100% Java interoperability, extension functions, lambda expressions, and higher-order functions.

In 2017, Google announced official support for Kotlin on Android. Google’s collaboration with JetBrains on Kotlin supporting Android has made Kotlin a popular choice for Android developers. In 2018, JetBrains introduced Kotlin Multiplatform, which enables Kotlin code to be translated and compiled to run...