My impressions of working with Kotlin and SvelteKit
2023-04-29
As a developer, I am confronted with a plethora of new tools and technologies every day, most of which fail to catch on. This year however, my plan was to focus on learning Rust and Svelte, and so far, it has been going great. However, as I'm currently focusing on building higher-level client-server software, I realized that I needed to learn another language that would enable me to do just that. That's when I discovered Kotlin, a language that provides a good middle ground between enabling new features and making use of an existing ecosystem.
Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language that was developed by JetBrains. It's designed to be concise, expressive, and safe. It's also interoperable with Java, which makes it an excellent choice for building client-server software. Kotlin provides new features such as null-safety, immutable variables, and type inference - just like in Rust. These features make it easier to write safer and more robust code. When it comes to backend/API development, Spring Boot is the de facto standard in the Java ecosystem, so that's what I use. It's a powerful tool that provides a lot of out-of-the-box functionality. However, the tutorials for Spring Boot can be outdated and at least for me there was quite a steep learning curve. Despite this, I still believe that Spring Boot is an excellent choice for building client-server software, especially together with Kotlin.
For the frontend I chose SvelteKit, which is a powerful application framework for building fast and modern web apps. It's based on the concepts of boilerplate-free components, no virtual DOM and true reactivity without complex state management. It's easy to learn as well as use and I find it really enjoyable to work with, even though I am usually not a big of frontend development. This holds especially true, when you use it with TypeScript, which is a statically-typed superset of JavaScript that provides a lot of benefits over traditional JavaScript. It makes it easier to write safer and more robust code and it provides better tooling and IDE support (even in VSCodium).
Overall, I'm very happy with my current setup of Kotlin and SvelteKit. It provides me with the tools that I need to build high-level client-server software and fast and modern web apps. If you're looking to learn a new language or framework, I highly recommend giving Kotlin and SvelteKit a try. You won't be disappointed...