alt Hacker NewsKotlin is a thoughtful language that is a joy to write.
Java was stagnant and ripe for being kicked off the top.
Scala was the hack that showed why Java was starting to suck but Scala suffered from no direction. Every single idea a PhD ever had was implemented in the language with no thought other than it seems cool to be able to do that too. Which is why all the Scala codebases fell apart, because you could write anything, anyway you want, and it was impossible to maintain without extremely strict guidelines on what parts of the language you were allowed to use. Also the build times were atrocious.
Kotlin designers evaluated language features across the ecosystem and chose what made sense to make Java better when it came out and now has easily surpassed Java. They are still thoughtful in what they choose to add to the language and it is now very powerful. However they smartly imitate Python by having clear guidelines on what choices you should be making when writing code so that other developers can easily dive in.
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I liked Groovy, but Kotlin was the better successor. Scala was beyond ridiculous as far as learning curve--crazy language. I always thought Java sucked and I spent far too much time working with Java (because money) and having to deal with framework on top of framework as well as all those idiotic design patterns that seemed so important only for me to realize years later that it was all basically a waste because OOP itself is a waste. I was writing better code in Python and Go five years ago without needing those all-important design patterns (okay, a few still translate). I just didn't know it at the time how horrible the situation was in Java. In hindsight, everything about Java was someone's money grab that I was dealing with. Mockito did help me a lot through those times, but I wish I had never gone through them at all!
> Scala was the hack
Well, I absolutely disagree with this take. Scala actually builds on top of a couple of its powerful primitives. Especially Scala 3 is a beautiful language.