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JetBrains
kotlin
Kotlin2014–2025
JetBrains / kotlin

kotlin

The Kotlin Programming Language.

Languages & CompilersWeb DevelopmentLibraries & SDKs
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
34Distinct people
38Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
53.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The Kotlin Programming Language.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 8:03:49 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year38 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2014-06-04 14:36:53 UTC to 2025-12-20 13:24:42 UTC.

02462014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20142015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 2 submissions, 0 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 3 submissions, 3 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC220
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC633
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

4 sources
dalke·Nov 29, 2015
Maybe. Or maybe not. The data I presented is insufficient. Kotlin initial commit 8 Nov 2010 - https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/commit/369b1974782b821e4... . Note that this does not mean it's the first work done on the project, only the first commit. http://www.nondot.org/sabre/ says "I started work on the Swift Programming Language (wikipedia) in July of 2010. I implemented much of the basic language structure, with only a few people knowing of its existence. A few other (amazing) people started contributing in earnest late in 2011, and it became a major focus for the Apple Developer Tools group in July 2013." In any case, it's clear that neither was influenced by the other, at least during initial development.
In Which one invented first: Kotlin or Swift?
justthistime_·Sep 29, 2015
No, I don't think you understood it. There is a large qualitative gap between what you propose, and what Scala does: In Scala, it is an _one_ time effort to make String act "like" collections, while the only solution Kotlin provides means doing the work manually _n_ times: At every call site of the string in question. Kotlin developers also didn't feel like your point was too convincing: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/blob/master/libraries/st...
In Kotlin: A New Hope in a Java 6 Wasteland
kragen·Sep 28, 2015
The most important thing about Kotlin is a bit hard to find — it’s licensed under the GPL-compatible Apache License 2.0: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/blob/master/license/LICE... Now that I know that, Kotlin looks pretty cool! It proposes solutions to a lot of the most painful problems in Java. I'm not sure the solutions are always correct, though. When I hear "null safety", I think "pattern matching on a Maybe sum type to statically ensure non-nullness", but what the talk says Kotlin actually provides is pressuring you into writing a bunch of your code in the Maybe monad, thus spreading nullness far and wide. The talk example is "println(a?.length())". Maybe that's the best pragmatic solution in Kotlin, or maybe the talk oversimplifies what Kotlin actually gives you, but it kind of seems like the wrong direction to go in to me (
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In Kotlin: A New Hope in a Java 6 Wasteland

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