Basic Types and Expressions

Pretty much every programming language has the concept of data types, things like integers and strings and so forth. Kotlin is no exception. Kotlin’s basic types are modeled somewhat after Java, as Kotlin’s original target environment was the JVM. However, there are some differences that you will encounter in your Kotlin development work.

Basic Types and “Objectness”

From Kotlin’s standpoint, everything is an object. This stands in contrast to some languages, like Java, where basic types are “primitives” but have object counterparts. So, in Java, int is a primitive and Integer is the corresponding object type. Kotlin does away with that distinction, so everything is an object, including things like numbers.