Why I refuse to code Android apps in Kotlin

Listen.

I’m aware that it’s childish but the reason I refuse to code in Kotlin is what I call the Kult of Kotlin.​

I know Kotlin is a nice language. In fact, I have studied it quite a bit. I bought (and read) books about it, purchased and watched tutorials on Udemy, the works.

The reason? I didn’t want to get left behind. I wanted to be fitter, happier, more productive.

Turns out, I wasn’t fitter (that’s an understatement). I wasn’t happier. And I wasn’t more productive.

Do you know what I was? Pretty comfortable in Java land. But still, I wouldn’t rule Koltin out as a language for my future Android programming endeavors.

Something was still bothering me, though. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Until one day, a developer buddy of mine made the following comment

Kotliners are the Android world’s Jehovah’s Witnesses

And I was like… woah! It’s not Kotlin itself that’s bothering me.

It’s the constant attemps to shove Kotlin down my throat that are really bothering me.​ No, I don’t want a copy of Watchtower. Same as I don’t really care about type inference.

No, I don’t want a copy of Watchtower. Same as I don’t really care about type inference.

And yet… you see it everywhere: “Oh, you’re still coding in Java? *snigger*”

Perfectly fine accepted answer on StackOverflow in (god forbid) Java? Can’t have that, can we? Let’s write the exact same thing… in Kotlin!

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Is it a stupid reason to not code in Kotlin? I don’t think so. First you’d have to give me a really good reason to give up on a language I know intimately for another, new language with its own quirks and edge-cases that I’d have to deal with again.

I know Jake Wharton and his disciples love it. But as the developer buddy of mine has pointed out, Jake Wharton’s initials spell

JW

C O I N C I D E N C E?

I’m calling Dan Brown. There’s a great book somewhere in there.

Why I refuse to code Android apps in Kotlin was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.