I got tired of waiting for Gradle, so I built a runtime that runs Kotlin like Python.

#kotlin #performance #productivity #tooling

I hit ./gradlew run and alt-tab to Discord. By the time I tab back, it's still resolving dependencies. This is a script. It's 40 lines.

So I helped build something that doesn't make me wait. Elide.

What is Elide?

Elide is a runtime. Like Node. Like Python. You install it, you run code.

curl -sSL elide.sh | bash

But here's the thing: it doesn't just run one language.

elide run app.kt      # Kotlin, no Gradle
elide run server.ts   # TypeScript, no build step
elide run script.py   # Python, faster than CPython

One binary. One toolchain. Multiple languages.

Why this matters

Most teams aren't single-language. You've got TypeScript on the frontend, Python for ML scripts, maybe Kotlin or Java somewhere in the backend. That's three runtimes, three package managers, three sets of problems.

Elide is one runtime that speaks all of them. Install dependencies from npm and Maven in the same project. Run tests across languages with one command. No context switching.

How it works

Elide is built on GraalVM. The same compiler optimizes across languages-JavaScript, Python, Kotlin. No serialization when crossing language boundaries. All in one engine.