The very first thing you need to do is add Kotlin support to your Android Studio installation.īefore we get started, make sure you’re running the most recent, stable version of Android Studio, as you’re more likely to encounter bugs with the Kotlin plugin on experimental versions of Android Studio.

You’ll also know how to avoid ever having to write another findViewById, by making use of Kotlin’s Android extensions.īut first, it's time to teach our development environment how to speak a new language! Installing the Kotlin Plugin in Android Studio By the time you reach the end of the tutorial, you’ll have created a simple Android app that displays a line of text-and is written entirely in Kotlin. In this follow-up tutorial, we're going to get started with some actual Kotlin development. It combines features and concepts from both functional and procedural programming.Its syntax is designed to feel very similar to Java, meaning it should be fairly easy for Java developers to get to grips with the fundamentals of Kotlin.It's 100% interchangeable with Java, to the point where you can continue to use existing Java libraries and frameworks, and can even use a mixture of Java and Kotlin code in your Android projects.In the first part of this three-part series, we looked at what Kotlin is and what it has to offer Android developers: There are a variety of modern programming languages that are designed to run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and one of these languages that's becoming popular in the Java community is Kotlin. In your project level adle, add the Kotlin dependency.While the vast majority of Android apps are written in Java, there's no rule that you have to use Java for Android development. So to add it, you'll need to add some dependencies. It's a fancy library, with a lot of features and an accompanying IntelliJ/Android Studio plugin, but it's a library. JetBrains, the company behind the language, has a handy FAQ for this. Before we get started though, you may want to familiarize yourself a bit on how Kotlin works, if you haven't done so already. It also assumes you're using Android Studio. This tutorial is going to go over how you can add Kotlin to an existing Android project that's made in Java. The code might end up looking a little messy if you try to use more advanced features, but it's possible.

Meaning, you can access Kotlin APIs from Java. That compatibility works the other way around, too.

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