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Adam Crockett 🌀
Adam Crockett 🌀

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Kotlin in Graal, what have I got myself into.

Preface

  • I don't know Java
  • I have not ever truly understood docker's reason for being
  • I am frightened of new things

Imagine a developer with a gaping hole where his mouth should be and a glimmer in his eye, that was me around 5 seconds ago.

In my late 20's I started to become less excited about JavaScript my goto language and started to focus on concepts and ideas from other communities, what it means to be a programmer today? Why so many languages and standards.
I learned lots of other languages (bits of and bobs), but today, finally I get it, I get what it is to be polyglot developer. You see, like most great advice, we tend to put it down and leave it for a year, then this weekend I googled GraalVM, It has got my mind racing, what could I do with this thing, its quite state of the art, maybe I could take it and revolutionise the JavaScript build ecosystem which is a mess at this point.

No lets make an app, but while we learn to use Graal lets learn Java / Kotlin and docker while i'm at it. I just managed to get the following working, and I don't know squat:

  • A graalVM container
  • Quarkus web framework
  • Livereloading
  • Kotlin

Im just about to burst, how cool is that, so much new things, I know what your thinking, "hipster" alright, yeah maybe, but Graal could well be a viable enterprise solution in the future and I am tired of feeling helpless in not knowing Java, what better way to learn than starting at the top of the tree and working my way down.

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