Programming Kotlin: Get to grips quickly with the best Java alternative

Familiarize yourself with all of Kotlin's features with this in-depth guide

Key Features

• Get a thorough introduction to Kotlin
• Learn to use Java code alongside Kotlin without any hiccups
• Gain a complete overview of null safety, Generics, and many more interesting features

Book Description

Kotlin has been making waves ever since it was open sourced by JetBrains in 2011; it has been praised by developers across the world and is already being adopted by companies.

This book provides a detailed introduction to Kotlin that shows you all its features and will enable you to write Kotlin code to production. We start with the basics: get you familiar with running Kotlin code, setting up, tools, and instructions that you can use to write basic programs. Next, we cover object oriented code: functions, lambdas, and properties - all while using Kotlin's new features. Then, we move on to null safety aspects and type parameterization. We show you how to destructure expressions and even write your own. We also take you through important topics like testing, concurrency, microservices, and a whole lot more. By the end of this book you will be able to compose different services and build your own applications.

What you will learn

• Use new features to write structured and readable object-oriented code
• Find out how to use lambdas and higher order functions to write clean, reusable, and simple code
• Write unit tests and integrate Kotlin tests with Java code in a transitioning code base
• Write real-world production code in Kotlin in the style of microservices
• Leverage Kotlin's extensions to the Java collections library
• Use destructuring expressions and find out how to write your own
• Write code that avoids null pointer errors and see how Java-nullable code can integrate with features in a Kotlin codebase
• Discover how to write functions in Kotlin, see the new features available, and extend existing libraries

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started with Kotlin
2. Kotlin Basics
3. Object-Oriented Code in Kotlin
4. Functions in Kotlin
5. Higher Order Functions and Functional Programming
6. Properties
7. Null Safety, Reflection, and Annotations
8. Generics
9. Data Classes
10. Collections
11. Testing in Kotlin
12. Microservices in Kotlin
13. Concurrency

Stephen Samuel is an accomplished developer with over 17 years of experience. He has worked with Java throughout his career, and in the past 5 years has focused on Scala. He has a passion for concurrency and Big Data technologies. Having spent the last few years in investment banking, he is currently working with Kotlin on a major Big Data ingestment project. Stephen is also active in the open source community, being the author of several high profile Scala and Kotlin libraries.

Stefan Bocutiu is a Big Data consultant with over 13 years of experience in software development. He enjoys coding in Scala, C#, and has a passion for stream processing technologies. With the team at DataMountaineer--a consultancy company offering delivery of solutions for streaming/ fast data platforms - he focuses on providing scalable, unified, real-time data pipelines allowing reactive decision making, analytics, and Hadoop integration.

Stefan is passionate about motorsports, and while his racing skills are not good enough to allow him to compete, he tries to attend as many MotoGP races as possible. When he is not coding, he can be found at the climbing wall or at the gym. Occasionally, hiking and scrambling trips are on his calendar, and during the winter season, skiing trips are a must for him.