Will Swift and Kotlin change the era of mobile development?

When we talk about developing native mobile apps, it means having a team of iOS developers working on Objective-C or the Android team working on Java. Due to the differences between the two platforms and languages, there were only a few developers that were experts on both the platforms. However, with the introduction of new languages, things have changed and has brought more options & opportunities in the field of app development.

One of the most recent topics that are being discussed in the mobile apps market is Kotlin and Swift. Let’s see what are these languages for and how the Android App Developers are using them in changing the era of app development.

Understanding Kotlin and Swift

Swift came into existence in 2014 and is used by Apple as their proprietary language after Objective-C for developing iOS apps. Though it was introduced to replace the older language, it didn’t show much of response due to the lack of system policies in backward compatibility between each release leaving developers doubtful about project migration. However, with the release of the upgraded version Swift 2, it gained much trust and popularity as it was developed to be an open source with improved user-centric approach and better functionality.

Developed by JetBrains team, the language Kotlin was produced by Android studio and was made available to the world in Feb 2016. If we compare it with the old language Java, Kotlin is much better in terms of utility and reach. The new language has been built in such a way that it is interoperable with Java and the syntax used is easily recognizable by the Java developers. Another thing about Kotlin is that it is not yet declared as the primary language or the replacement for Java, unlike Swift that has been chosen as the language for building iOS applications.

Impact of Swift and Kotlin in App Development

We cannot deny the fact that Swift and Kotlin are the two modern programming languages that provide a list of features that the old languages do not support. Some of the features that the new languages support are as follows:

• Easily readable
• Lesser verbose
• Easy maintenance
• Strict & safer functionality
• More modern in terms of syntax

Apart from the points stated above, these languages are also being adopted as server side languages. Big giants like IBM is using Swift to develop server side applications and Spring also announced that Spring Framework 5.0 will be having dedicated Kotlin support. With the advanced features of extensions and immutability that support functional as well as procedural programming patterns, both the languages allow developers to go for new patterns of designs. The interesting part of these two languages is that their syntax is so similar that it can be a confusing task to distinguish them. However, these systems are highly accessible giving more opportunities to developers of every App Development Company. Though these languages are still in developing phase, they are going to impact the way ideas are being approached in the world of mobile app development.