Android Studio is the developers interface into the world of code for Android and back at Google I/O this year, Kotlin was announced as an officially supported ‘first-class’ language in Android development moving forward. Google has released Android Studio 3, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE) overnight, bringing Kotlin along for the ride.
Some of the changes you’ll find in Android Studio 3 include themes, Java to Kotlin conversion tools, code completion for Kotlin, APK debugging as well as a host of fixes from the previous version.
Not being in the Android development workspace we went to the guys at Shifty Jelly to get a better understanding of how this changes the game, Russell was pretty happy to let us know that
The other day we converted a class that was 183 lines of Java, to 16 in Kotlin. The difference isn’t always as dramatic but it leads to faster development time with less errors all while being much more enjoyable to use.
It’s also completely interoperable with existing Java code with no work required by the developer. You can add 1 Kotlin class to a project with thousands of other Java ones and it just works.
So it could lead to more people choosing Android as a platform to learn development on. Especially because unlike iOS it doesn’t require an expensive Mac to develop on. Any windows, Mac or Linux computer can run Android Studio and test phones are much cheaper to buy
Lastly it makes Android a much friendlier first development environment to learn, because Kotlin is a far more approachable language than Java for first time developers.
Google has released a full list of improvements to be found in Android Studio version 3 in their release notes on their developer site, as well as releasing a video on YouTube to take you through the highlights.
So theres plenty to like from a development perspective and lots to look forward to for users. Google has released Android Studio for Windows, Mac, and Linux and developers can download it now directly from developer.android.com/studio.
With more rapid development capabilities, what are you looking forward to seeing from your favourite apps?
With this release, the Flutter IntelliJ plugin can now be install in Android Studio. Flutter is a new/alpha mobile app SDK for iOS and Android from the one code base. The sysui for fuchsia os is also using Flutter.