Welcome to typealias!

I first started exploring the Kotlin programming language almost two years ago when it was in beta. It struck me as a fascinating blend of some amazing features that I’d seen in other languages like C#, Scala, and Groovy, with some very cool, unique features of its own. I worked my way through the Koans and read through the online documentation, building sample apps to try out everything that I found. And what I found was fantastic.

I’ve noticed that I can often reduce a Java class to a Kotlin equivalent that takes less than two-thirds of the lines of code, and actually improve the readability in the process. Easier immutability, simple data classes, and a nice standard library enabled me to write code the way I had already been doing in Java, but with a lot less effort. Smart casts, extension functions, and some new constructs make it the programming language that I secretly wished Java would have grown into. And of course, Kotlin’s outstanding interoperability with Java means it plays well with thousands of libraries, and existing projects can be gracefully migrated over time.

I found myself exploring the various features of Kotlin in detail, and loving what I discovered. My goal is now to explore every facet of the language, documenting my findings on this website, in hopes that you’ll enjoy the discoveries as much as I do.

This site has three main sections to it:

News, where I’ll post updates about this web site, and about things happening in the broader Kotlin world.
Concepts, where I’ll do deep-dives into the different language features.
Guides, where I’ll take what I’ve uncovered during those deep-dives, and structure them into overviews and tutorials.

Whether you’re new to Kotlin, or you’ve been using it in production for years, I hope you’ll join me in my quest for a deep understanding of this amazing programming language!