When we compiled Hello World! and produced the JAR, we instructed the compiler to bundle in the Kotlin runtime. Why is the runtime needed? Take a closer look at the following bytecode that was generated, if you haven't already done so. To be more specific, look at line 3. It invokes a method to validate the fact that the args variable is not null; therefore, if you compile the code without asking for the runtime to be bundled in, and then try to run it, you will get an exception:
$ kotlinc HelloWorld.kt -d HelloWorld.jar $ java -jar HelloWorld.jar Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: kotlin/jvm/internal/Intrinsics at HelloWorldKt.main(HelloWorld.kt) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: kotlin.jvm.internal.Intrinsics
The runtime footprint is very small; at approximately 800 K, you can't argue otherwise. Kotlin comes...
