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@ Anthony Accioly
2025-04-10 17:27:48
Kotlin is ❤️. I'm sure you'll learn it quickly. It's not quite as straightforward as Go, but it's powerful enough and not as hard to write as something like Rust.
My take on it: be patient with the ecosystem and build tools. Kotlin is worth the grind (I did zero mobile development at work, using Kotlin for backend development instead).
If you want, I can try to get in touch with folks at JetBrains to get you an Open Source license for their tools (Haven is a good candidate... I've seen smaller projects accepted. Although we may need a basic home page for it first). IntelliJ Ultimate is 100% worth it for Kotlin. Goland is also great for Go.
Hint: JetBrains sponsors Advent of Code. For folks who are more hands-on, going through Kotlin Idioms (https://kotlinlang.org/docs/idioms.html ) + Koans (https://play.kotlinlang.org/koans/overview ) and then jumping into Advent of Code using one of the many templates and tools available online is a great way to go. You don’t need to grind DS&A to solve the first few exercises. It’s also worth checking out how folks who are used to idiomatic Kotlin solve AoC problems: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlFc5cFwUnmwHaD3-qeoLHnho_PY2g9JXI
I've also managed to convince more than one person to write their very first unit tests using JUnit + Kotest assertions (https://kotest.io/ ). Some have even been successfully converted into fully XP/TDD practitioners with time (trust me, it’s easier to orange-pill someone than to turn someone allergic to automated tests into a TDD enthusiast 🤣).
I’d say ignore Gradle, Android, Composer, etc., until you’re familiar with the language (and bullish enough about it to deal with the shortcomings of the Java/Android/iOS/WASM ecosystems). Other than for Android/mobile development, do let me know if I can help you in any way.