Interestingly, Kotlin has a pretty solid cross-platform story.
I'd pick it over Swift if targeting Android since it can build and run in the JVM as well as natively -- and has Swift/ObjC interop. Its also very usable on the server if you wanted to, since you can use it in place of Java and tap into the very mature JVM ecosystem. If that's what you're into.
And I have a lot more faith in JetBrains being good stewards of the language rather than Apple, who have a weird collection of priorities.
Kotlin is practically a no-brainer when you have JVM at your finger tips, versus something like Swift which is comparatively young.
I tried to use Vapor with Swift recently and struggled to get something working because the documentation looked comprehensive, but had a lot of gaps. I ended up throwing it out because I didn't have the time to dig through the source to understand how to do something, when I could use a mature framework in any other language instead.
The promise is there but I'm just not ready to invest. My youthful days of unbounded curiosity are coming to an end and these days I just want to get something done without much faff.
Mind you, Kotlin/Native (which is what gets used when you're compiling for iOS) doesn't have access to the JVM.
However, the Kotlin community is fundamentally all about open source, whereas Apple & iOS Devs have an allergy to it. The quality and quantity is already miles above the vast majority of what's in the Swift ecosystem. https://klibs.io has all the native compatible libs. And if you're targeting a platform where the JVM is available then yeah, it's massive. Compose makes UI tolerable compared to JWT too. Even large projects like Spring are Kotlin first nowadays.
The language doesn’t really matter. The underlying SDK/framework is where the action is at.
However, I suspect that we may not be too far off, from LLMs being the true cross-platform system. You feed the same requirements, with different targets, and it generates full native apps.
Fully agree. I have zero Swift knowledge and currently use LLM to write a native app. I'm well aware of the SDKs and concepts in iOS development, so even if something's wrong I got intuition where to look and how to make the LLM fix it.
This is going to be used much more than Swift for servers. Swift is a primarily client-side mobile language. It makes sense that you tap into reusing the logic.
Interestingly, Kotlin has a pretty solid cross-platform story.
I'd pick it over Swift if targeting Android since it can build and run in the JVM as well as natively -- and has Swift/ObjC interop. Its also very usable on the server if you wanted to, since you can use it in place of Java and tap into the very mature JVM ecosystem. If that's what you're into.
And I have a lot more faith in JetBrains being good stewards of the language rather than Apple, who have a weird collection of priorities.
Kotlin is practically a no-brainer when you have JVM at your finger tips, versus something like Swift which is comparatively young.
I tried to use Vapor with Swift recently and struggled to get something working because the documentation looked comprehensive, but had a lot of gaps. I ended up throwing it out because I didn't have the time to dig through the source to understand how to do something, when I could use a mature framework in any other language instead.
The promise is there but I'm just not ready to invest. My youthful days of unbounded curiosity are coming to an end and these days I just want to get something done without much faff.
Mind you, Kotlin/Native (which is what gets used when you're compiling for iOS) doesn't have access to the JVM.
However, the Kotlin community is fundamentally all about open source, whereas Apple & iOS Devs have an allergy to it. The quality and quantity is already miles above the vast majority of what's in the Swift ecosystem. https://klibs.io has all the native compatible libs. And if you're targeting a platform where the JVM is available then yeah, it's massive. Compose makes UI tolerable compared to JWT too. Even large projects like Spring are Kotlin first nowadays.
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I don't know. Could be nice for those developers that prioritize iOS and now they could keep writing Swift also for Android.
Is it gonna be what you primarily use if you wanna write an Android app? Probably not.
Is it gonna displace react Native? Probably not. Is it gonna reach the levels of flutter? Maybe.
The language doesn’t really matter. The underlying SDK/framework is where the action is at.
However, I suspect that we may not be too far off, from LLMs being the true cross-platform system. You feed the same requirements, with different targets, and it generates full native apps.
> from LLMs being the true cross-platform system
Fully agree. I have zero Swift knowledge and currently use LLM to write a native app. I'm well aware of the SDKs and concepts in iOS development, so even if something's wrong I got intuition where to look and how to make the LLM fix it.
I’m not sure about that but porting libraries from one language to another seems well within their capabilities.
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> Is it gonna reach the levels of flutter? Maybe.
Never. It won’t even reach Compose level, Flutter level DX is unattainable for any framework outside Flutter.
This is going to be used much more than Swift for servers. Swift is a primarily client-side mobile language. It makes sense that you tap into reusing the logic.
Just like .NET for linux... right? RIGHT?
At least a very common .NET web app framework is often deployed on linux. Powershell for linux might be more apt lol
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