Best Way To Learn Kotlin For Experienced Programmers

If you’re an experienced programmer like me and new to Kotlin, the best and quickest way for you to learn Kotlin is to go through this official “Learn Kotlin By Example”

While learning Kotlin by example, it is best to install IntelliJ IDEA, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Kotlin.

Steps To Install IntelliJ IDEA

1. Uninstall your old JDK. You can follow the steps here.

2. Download and install the latest JDK. Select “JDK Download” here.

3. Download and Install IntelliJ IDEA here (the community version is good enough).

The easiest way for you to try any Kotlin code is to create a “Console Application” project. I’m sure you’re able to figure that out as an experienced programmer. :)

There is another way is to use Kotlin REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop), a tool for running Kotlin code interactively. It can be run from the following menu:

Tools -> Kotlin -> Kotlin REPL

You can also try this online interactive environment here. Personally, I prefer to create IntelliJ IDEA projects to save my code samples for reference later.

New Concepts That You Need To Know

I’m coming from C/C++ and C# programming background. These are some common new concepts that you may need to know:

1. Null Safety

2. Equality Checks

3. Conditional Expression

4. Data Classes

5. Object Keyword

6. Extension Functions and Properties

7. Scope Functions

8. Delegation

For more detailed Kotlin vs C# comparisons, you can refer to the following article:

Conclusion

Kotlin is fun, I like it. The authors of “Learn Kotlin By Example” have really done a good job. I’m glad I found it. It makes me a lot easier to read and understand this official Kotlin documentation.