Education
Last updated on Sep 5, 2024
Last updated on Nov 23, 2021
Kotlin is a powerful, simple, and versatile language created by Jetbrains. The language allows you to avoid many obstacles that you often face in Java development. It saves a lot of developer’s time, letting them to focus on more creative tasks.
But what does Kotlin Multiplatform mean?
It is a software development kit developed by the Google team that allows developers to write code for iOS as well as Android apps simultaneously.
That ultimately eliminates the need to deploy extra workforce who can work with the technologies like Swift, Flutter and React Native to build cross platform applications.
Source: Jetbrains.com
Kotlin native is a technology that compiles Kotlin code to native binaries, which can run without a virtual machine. It is an LLVM based backend for the Kotlin compiler and native implementation of the Kotlin standard library”- Kotlin Documentation
It is specifically designed to allow the compilation for the platform where virtual machines are not possible. For example, embedded devices or iOS. With a native approach, developers can produce a self-contained program that does not require a virtual machine.
Kotlin supports following target platforms,
The full list of supported platforms is here.
Kotlin native interoperability
Kotlin native supports two-way interoperability. The compiler creates,
Additionally, it supports interoperability to use existing libraries directly from static or dynamic C libraries, and C, swift and Objective C frameworks.
You can include compiled Kotlin code into existing projects written in C, C++, Swift, Objective-C, and other languages with ease.
The following steps demonstrate how to use IntelliJ IDEA for creating a Kotlin native application. First, you need to install the latest version of IntelliJ IDEA.
To create an IntelliJ IDEA navigate to the File → New → Project, then from the left panel select Kotlin. Here, you need to enter the project name, select the project template as Native Application, and click Next.
By default, the project will use Gradle with Kotlin DSL as a build system. Apply the default configuration and click on finish.
It will create the main.kt file by default with the code that prints “Hello, Kotlin Native!” to the standard output. The build.gradle.kts file contains the project settings.
You can start the application by clicking the Run Next to the run configuration.
IntelliJ IDEA opens the Run tab and shows the output as shown below.
Here, we will update an application to count the number of letters in your input name. Following are the steps to update your application,
src/<your\_app\_name> Main/kotlin. The file main.kt includes sample code that prints "Hello, Kotlin native!". 1 fun main() { 2 // Read the input value. 3 println("Hello, enter your name:") 4 val name = readLine() 5 // Eliminate the whitespaces and Count the letters in the name. 6 name?.replace(" ", "")?.let { 7 println("Your name contains ${it.length} letters") 8 } ?: error("Error while reading input from the terminal: the value can't be null.") 9 10 } 11
Enter the name and see the output,
Here is the list of advantages of using Kotlin native
In this article, we have discussed what is Kotlin native, what platforms it supports, its interoperability features, how to create Kotlin native applications using IntelliJ IDEA, and its advantages.
From the discussion, we can conclude that Kotlin native is a modern type-safe language for cross-platform application development.
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Enjoy coding!
https://kotlinlang.org/docs/native-overview.html
https://www.edureka.co/blog/basic-kotlin-native-app/
https://www.raywenderlich.com/7357-ios-app-with-kotlin-native-getting-started
https://appdevcon.nl/session/kotlin-native-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
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