In this article, we will discuss two programming languages that gained popularity in past few years i.e. Kotlin and Go.
Let’s first have a basic overview of both languages and then discuss the differences between them.
Kotlin Programming Language
In Google i/o 2017, they have just announced that they are making Kotlin the official language for android. Kotlin will work together with Java. So, if you talk about Kotlin, it is very easier to work. Kotlin works on java platform i.e. JVM. So, if you know the java concept then you will easily understand Kotlin implementation.
Kotlin was revealed in 2011 by JetBrains (JetBrains is the same company that also produces IntelliJ).
Advantages of Kotlin:
- Open-source
- Maximize the productivity
- Can be easily maintained
- Reliable
- Easy to learn
Disadvantages of Kotlin:
- Limited source to learn
- Different from Java
- Compilation speed
- Less kotlin professionals
- Has less adoption on Github
Go Programming Language
Go is an open-source programming language so it helps us to make our software more reliable, scalable, and efficient. Go is concise, clean, and efficient. It has an efficient concurrency mechanism that is used to write our program more easily. It compiles machine code quickly yet has the ease of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It’s a fast, static typed, compiled language that behaves like a dynamically and interpreted language. It is useful for scalable servers and software systems. GoLang is best for micro-services and serverless cloud. It is developed, sponsored, and supported by Google.
Advantages of Go:
- Open Source
- Easy to learn
- Concurrency
- Static code analysis
- Garbage collected language
Disadvantages of Go:
- A young language so it is still developing.
- Too simple
- Runtime safety is not good
- Error handling is not perfect
- Absence of manual memory management
Now let’s discuss some differences between the two languages.
Kotlin vs Go
| Kotlin | Go |
| Kotin can be used to build all kinds of applications including native, web, and android apps. But it is majorly used for android development. | Go can also be used to build all kinds of applications but mainly used to build large scale server-side web apps. |
| It provides less performance in comparison to Go. |
It provides high performance in comparison to Kotlin. |
| Kotlin has 28.3k Github stars and 3.28k forks on Github. Has Less adoption than Go on Github. |
Go has 60.4k Github stars and 8.36k forks on Github. Has more adoption than Kotlin on Github. |
| Slack, 9GAG and Rainiest are some of the companies that use Kotlin. | Uber, Google, and Medium are some of the popular companies that use Go. |
As the above google trend comparison shows that Go has a very high popularity than Kotlin. This doesn’t mean one is better than the other. Each of them has its own pros, cons, and applications. If you are familiar with C or C++ then you will find it easier to learn Go while if you are familiar with Java then you will find it easier to learn Kotlin.
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