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Programming Kotlin

You're reading from Programming Kotlin Get to grips quickly with the best Java alternative

Product type Paperback

Published in Jan 2017

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781787126367

Length 420 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

Java

Tools

IntelliJ Idea

Concepts

Programming Language

Authors (2):

Samuel

Bocutiu

View More author details

Table of Contents (20) Chapters

Programming Kotlin

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Customer Feedback

Preface

1. Getting Started with Kotlin FREE CHAPTER

2. Kotlin Basics

3. Object-Oriented Programming in Kotlin

4. Functions in Kotlin

5. Higher Order Functions and Functional Programming

6. Properties

7. Null Safety, Reflection, and Annotations

8. Generics

9. Data Classes

10. Collections

11. Testing in Kotlin

12. Microservices with Kotlin

13. Concurrency

Chapter 7. Null Safety, Reflection, and Annotations

The dreaded null pointer exception is a familiar sight to anyone who has been a Java developer for any length of time. It is caused by a failure to handle null references correctly. Avoiding these errors has been the subject of many different ideas in many different programming languages. In this chapter, we'll review Kotlin's approach to null safety. Speaking at QCon, a conference organized by the developer blogging site InfoQ, Tony Hoare, the creator of the null pointer, said this:

"I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has...

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Authors (2)

Samuel

Samuel

Stephen Samuel is an accomplished developer with over 17 years of experience. He has worked with Java throughout his career, and in the past 5 years has focused on Scala. He has a passion for concurrency and Big Data technologies. Having spent the last few years in investment banking, he is currently working with Kotlin on a major Big Data investment project. Stephen is also active in the open source community, being the author of several high profile Scala and Kotlin libraries.

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Bocutiu

Bocutiu

Stefan Bocutiu is a Big Data consultant with over 13 years of experience in software development. He enjoys coding in Scala, C#, and has a passion for stream processing technologies. With the team at DataMountaineer-he focuses on providing scalable, unified, real-time data pipelines allowing reactive decision making, analytics, and Hadoop integration. Stefan is passionate about motorsports, and while his racing skills are not good enough to allow him to compete, he tries to attend as many MotoGP races as possible. When he is not coding, he can be found at the climbing wall or at the gym. Occasionally, hiking and scrambling trips are on his calendar, and during the winter season, skiing trips are a must for him.

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