Undoubtedly there is a lot of hype surrounding the new kid on the block, Kotlin. Even so, it is currently welcoming ever increasing waves of Java migrants to the extent that starting out with Java for the Android platform is about to become outdated.

But why Kotlin?

Kotlin is an expressive programming language with lambdas, coroutines, properties, object and functional constructs and advanced features all built in. It is statically typed, just like Java, and seamlessly interoperates with any given Java library in order to leverage the vast functionality found in Java's ecosystem.

Kotlin has been designed for readability and removes a lot of boilerplate code due to an extremely compact and succinct language grammar, but the feature that makes it stand out from the rest is the inherent distinguishing between nullable and non-nullable data types, a feature that leads to fewer null pointer exceptions and therefore fewer bugs.

Udacity, always in touch with the trend, has launched this brand new, and free, "Kotlin BootCamp for Programmers" to bring Kotlin to the masses. It doesn't presume knowledge of Java; knowledge of any  modern object-oriented language will do, as candidates ought to be at least familiar with the concepts of OOP, the likes of classes, methods, inheritance and so on.

Despite Kotlin mostly being famous because of Android, the course treats Kotlin as a general programming language applicable to all sort of sectors and not just to Android. That being said, this bootcamp is the logical continuation for those having graduated from the Android Developer Nanodegree, (extensively covered in our seven-part series Insider's Guide to Udacity Android Developer Nanodegree ), who look to stay in sync with the latest developments of the platform or even to make the jump from Java to Kotlin for all new development.
 
The course makes use of the intelliJ IDE and is based on the metaphor of managing an Aquarium to teach the language's features.This involves tasks such as adding, multiplying or "deleting" fishes as a reflection of the plus, minus and times operators; the support of different types of water supplies to  showcase the Generic types; Interfaces that let us clean different water supplies; or waterFilters that let us iterate and filter Collections through the use of lambdas.

To quickly outline the course curriculum:

• Lesson 1 - Introduction starts by installing JDK and IntelliJ
• Lesson 2 - Kotlin Basics goes through operators, strings, arrays and loops 
• Lesson 3 - Functions covers functions, lambdas and arguments 
• Lesson 4 - Classes looks at  Classes, constructors, inheritance and interfaces
• Lesson 5 - Beyond the Basics tackles pairs, collections, extension functions and generics,
• Lesson 6 - Functional Manipulation high order functions, inlines and SAMs are introduced.

All in all, a new course for a modern language.

More Information

Kotlin Bootcamp for Programmers | Udacity

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