kotlin is a new JVM language, from JetBrains. To understand my title, you may want to read a comparison with Scala from the Kotlin perspective, and some of the discussion taking place in the Scala community.
Perhaps since I recently saw the final Harry Potter movie, the title of this post came immediately to mind. Harry Potter appears to me to be a fun story, whose details exist mainly to support that story. For example, characters seem to have the abilities they require to meet a specific challenge.
On the other hand, the characters in Middle Earth seem be situated in a world that has its own physics. The stories are based on that world, those characters, and the given physics. My understanding is that this is the intention and the process taken to write the books.
Arguably, Harry Potter is far simpler than LoTR. But, arguably, Harry Potter has less to offer than LoTR.
Ten years ago this analogy could have been (and was, essentially) made between Java and Smalltalk. Ten years before *that* the argument had been made between C++ and Smalltalk.
Java is not "pure". Java is in essence Smalltalk but with the "magic" its authors deemed necessary to make Java more successful.
Harry's world is not pure. Middle Earth is (minus some of the complications that can also be found in Smalltalk and Scala.)
Kotlin is a big improvement over Java, but it is merely Java minus some cruft, plus enough magic to be useful in 2011. Scala on the other hand has its own physics that makes sense, and provides for a more rich future than Kotlin.
Hmmm. Just thinking...
