Basic difference between Java and Kotlin

If you have worked with Java, getting started with Kotlin is very easy, because Kotlin was born to improve the unnecessary things of Java, helping us focus on the business of the application instead of having to write a lot of lines of code.

For example, for a Hello World application with the main() method to print the text “Hello World”:

  • With Java we need to create a new .java file, then define the class that comes with this .java file. Next, create a new main() method to use System.out.println() to print the text “Hello World”:
  • With Kotlin, you also need to create a new .kt file, but you don’t need to define a class name. You can write the static main() method directly to print the word “Hello World”:

You don’t even need a semicolon at the end!

Here, as you can see in the above example, the method in Kotlin will start with the keyword “fun”. Method parameters start with the parameter name, then the data type of this parameter. The parameter names and data types are separated by a colon “:”.

You can remove the args parameter in the main() method above because in the body of the method, we are not using this parameter:

The result is still the same:

If in Java, the main() method you remove the parameter (String[] args) then Java will understand this main() method is not the main() method to run the application.

Kotlin uses wrappers for common code in Java. In the above example to print the text “Hello World”, as you can see, instead of writing:

in Java, now we just need to write:

in Kotlin.

If your method returns a result, then in Kotlin, the way it is written is also different.

We will put the return data type right after the method and parameter name declarations, separated by a colon, as follows:

Example:

The code is very short, isn’t it?

In Kotlin, we don’t use the new operator to initialize an object.

Kotlin omits this operator, but we can also instantiate an object, like this:

The Student class has the following content:

We will declare the variable starting with the val keyword and with the Getter or Setter method, we do not need to call these methods directly, just call the variable name with the property. Actually, Kotlin will also compile bytecode like Java but just omitted for brevity! The result is the same as we do in Java, as follows:

The code is simple, isn’t it?

In Kotlin we can use wrapper arrayListOf() to instantiate an ArrayList object.

Accessing the elements in this ArrayList is also much easier:

Result:

The syntax is the same as when working with arrays in Java.

As you can see, we also do not need to use the get() method to access the elements in the List. Just use square brackets and specify the index of the element to access.

For Exception, in Kotlin, we don’t have a distinction between Checked Exception and Runtime Exception.

All exceptions in Kotlin are Runtime Exceptions. If in Java, the following code, you have to handle the exception:

We handle this exception using try…catch or add throws IOException

In Kotlin, you don’t need to do this:

The IDE does not require you to handle exceptions

Of course, you can also use try … catch to handle exceptions. But not required at compile time.

There are many more differences between Java and Kotlin. Please find out more!

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