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Why Most KOTLIN PROGRAMMING Fail?

by basicact

Kotlin is becoming a mainstream language, but why? We all know that Kotlin is the most promising programming language that Java developers use for Android development. So rather than wasting time talking about why you should learn Kotlin and making a case for using it on your projects, I want to talk about something else: Why most of the Kotlin programs fail.

Why Most Of The Kotlin (Android) Programming Fail?

Although it’s very easy to learn Kotlin programming, but learning the concepts of object-oriented programming is not enough to write efficient code. There are various things that Java developers need to keep in mind while creating Android apps in Kotlin. For example, the usage of IDE, OOPs concepts, Data classes, Extensions etc.

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What is an Encapsulation in Kotlin?

This mechanism of hiding the implementation of a class to make it more stable and maintainable is called Encapsulation. The users can’t access or change any implementation details directly; they will only use the interface provided by the developer. This also provides security against changes in implementation that might break existing code.

Why Developers Fail Writing An Efficient Kotlin Program?

Let’s see some common reasons that might be causing the problem while writing effective code on Kotlin:

1. Not Understanding Inheritance & Polymorphism Concept of Object Oriented Programming Language:

The difference between inheritance and polymorphism is that, subclass inherits the properties of its super class whereas sub-class can have different implementation for a method provided by its super class.

2. Not Understanding the Usage of Data Classes:

The Kotlin data classes help us to reduce a lot of boilerplate code and make our code more maintainable. It helps developers creating POJO’s without any additional features like equals (), hashcode() , toString(). Developers should prefer using classes over (Type alias). Type aliases were introduced in 1.1 and it is intended as a migration path from Java 8 which uses type aliased declarations for functional programming support, but we should try avoiding these type aliases if possible. Remote DBA is a trusted provider of better database management & support.

3. Submitting Anonymous Functions as Arguments to Higher-Order Functions:

Kotlin supports passing functions as parameters to other functions, but using anonymous functions for this purpose can make code difficult to maintain. Developers should prefer passing named function references instead of anonymous function objects.

4. Not Understanding the Difference Between With and apply ():

This is a very common mistake that Java developers do when they start programming in Kotlin. As we know, the with() method will help us to get rid of ‘this’ keyword while accessing or modifying an object’s members and properties, but it does so by creating an intermediate copy of the receiver object and thus making your application more memory consumptive than usual . To understand it better refer below-given examples:

5. Forgetting To Use Lambdas:

Lambdas in Kotlin simplify your code and make it more concise. It allows you to create a single-method interface where you pass a code block as an argument instead of providing a method name.

6. Leaving Out The Parenthesis While Calling Methods With Parameters:

Sometimes developers forget to add parenthesis while calling methods with parameters, which can also cause ambiguity when the compiler is unable to determine which overload to use.

7. Forgetting To Use Collections In For Loops:

When working with for loops, developers need to iterate over collections or ranges using ‘for Each ()’ function from the standard library, instead of the basic for loop syntax. Developers should avoid using any functions from java.util package because it’s deprecated in Kotlin.

8. Not Understanding the Difference between Nullable and Non-Null Types:

Although developers can use null values with non-null types, but this will lead to platform type system failures at runtime which will result in Null Pointer Exceptions. It is recommended to use ‘?’ operator instead of casting the value as a non-null type directly.

9. Confusing Any Type With Nothing Type:

‘Nothing’ type in Kotlin is similar to Java’s “void” keyword and it represents an absence of type or any value. However, unlike Java, there are no implicit conversions between Kotlin’s Unit class (equivalent to Java’s void) and regular object references because ‘nothing’ does not extend from Object.

10. Not Understanding the Usage of Sparse Arrays:

When working with sparse arrays, developers should use the ‘hashMap’ or ‘hashSet’ functions from the standard library because these collections do not allocate an entry for a given key unless it is added to them using ‘put()’ function . A regular array will automatically create an entry for every index if the corresponding value is null and this will result in more memory consumption than expected.

Conclusion:

Android development has become more streamlined with Kotlin. It is a new statically-typed programming language that runs on the JVM and helps developers to write concise, safe and correct code by eliminating lots of boilerplate code. It makes developing applications in Android Studio easier by providing features like null safety which protects against Null Pointer Exceptions, extension functions for enhancing existing classes without inheriting from them etc.

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