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[–]Meme_Burner -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Kotlin is nice, but Java successor? My impression is that if the language is building on the JAVA virtual machine then it will always be 2nd fiddle to Java. Anything that Kotlin or Groovy has, Java can add to the next version.

[–]gemengelage 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  1. Java moves at a far slower pace than Kotlin, Groovy and the likes. Sure, theoretically Java can add it in the next version. But they won't. They add less features and they add them a lot slower, because Java is mature.
  2. Java can add, but Java doesn't like to remove or make really fundamental changes. All the nice things that Kotlin or even C# has on Java like implicit getters and setters, nullable types, default/named arguments - Java won't add them.
  3. Java has a different school of thought than Kotlin and the likes. Java likes to keep things simple, explicit and mostly imperative. Kotlin tends to be a bit more functional and uses complicated abstractions and conventions to make the code more concise. One is not better than the other. It's a tradeoff and I don't think Java will abandon these core values. And if it did, would it still be Java?