Kotlin Features That Surprise Java Developers
Kotlin is a JVM-based language, and many of its features are borrowed from related languages like Groovy and Scala. It is designed to work well with Java and to be easy for existing Java developers to learn. Nevertheless, Kotlin contains several features and practices that surprise Java developers. This talk will review several of those features, and help existing Java developers understand them and use them productively.
Examples will include how to create static properties and methods without a static keyword, overriding properties as well as functions, defining objects rather than classes, the Unit and Nothing classes, why const is useful when you already haveval for final, and more.
About Kenneth Kousen
Ken Kousen is a Java Champion, several time JavaOne Rock Star, and a Grails Rock Star. He is the author of the Pragmatic Library books “Mockito Made Clear” and “Help Your Boss Help You,” the O'Reilly books “Kotlin Cookbook”, “Modern Java Recipes”, and “Gradle Recipes for Android”, and the Manning book “Making Java Groovy”. He also has recorded over a dozen video courses for the O'Reilly Learning Platform, covering topics related to Android, Spring, Java, Groovy, Grails, and Gradle.
His academic background include BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from M.I.T., an MA and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and an MS in Computer Science from R.P.I. He is currently President of Kousen IT, Inc., based in Connecticut.
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