Preface

Thanks!

First, thanks for your interest in Kotlin! Kotlin is one of the fastest-growing programming languages in the world. In no small part that is due to Google’s endorsement of Kotlin for Android app development, as Android is the world’s most widely-used operating system. Perhaps you are interested in using Kotlin for writing Android apps. Perhaps you are interested in Kotlin in other places, such as for Web apps. Kotlin itself is the same no matter where you apply it, so this book can help you get up to speed with the syntax and patterns that you will see as you read other developers’ Kotlin code and start writing it yourself.

Also, thanks for reading this book! This is one of a series of books published by CommonsWare, each designed to help a developer become proficient in some piece of technology.

Prerequisites

This book is written for newcomers in Kotlin. If you have already experimented some with Kotlin, you might elect to skim the first few chapters, until you start encountering topics that are new to you.

This book does expect you to have prior programming experience. A lot of comparisons will be made to Java, as Java is a very popular programming language and the one that was dominant for the first decade of Android app development. You do not need to be a Java programmer to use this book, though.

Source Code and Its License

The source code in this book is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License, in case you have the desire to reuse any of it.

Copying source code directly from the book, in the PDF editions, works best with Adobe Reader, though it may also work with other PDF viewers. Some PDF viewers, for reasons that remain unclear, foul up copying the source code to the clipboard when it is selected.