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Discussion on: Kotlin - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 
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Martin Häusler

Sorry for the delayed answer - busy times.

Kotlin enforces its type system everywhere. Every kotlin library out there adheres to it. The same cannot be said about Groovys @CompileStatic. Things like the JSON Slurper simply won't work under static compilation. Basically all the metaprogramming features contradict @CompileStatic.

I know, there are valid use cases for metaprogramming. But for general application development, I'd rather forfeit metaprogramming and get meaningful compilation results. In a way, it's nice that Groovy offers the choice, but it backfires when you need to include libraries which made a different choice than you did for your code. I don't want to deep-dive into a feature comparison of Kotlin vs. Groovy, but this fact alone (at least for me) would justify choosing Kotlin over Groovy for general application development. If you want an example of the extensive problems an optional type system can cause, you don't have to look any further than the current JavaScript/TypeScript mess. It's metaprogramming (JavaScript with monkeypatching) vs. well-defined strict type system (TypeScript) all over again. I'd rather stick to a language which doesn't even ask that question.