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They public stated that a reason why Kotlin exists is to sell licenses.

> The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA

https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...




I call this skin in the game. If making a good programming language is a monetary incentive for them the i'm fine with that.


Couldn't this also lead to a language that's only really usable with IntelliJ?


That's what they're currently attempting with Java. Kotlin is basically JetBrains' attempt at dominating the ecosystem,


Only if you think you need an IDE for a language to be usable. People sometimes make that argument about Java but kotlin is far less verbose.


No, Kotlin is open source.


Intellij Idea Community Edition with Kotlin support as well. Also free as freedom and free beer.


What exactly is the problem with this? How is it different from C#? Or even Java ?


Java was never created to sell Sun's IDE, regardless of the chosen IDE you always get same support.

C# was created to be the systems language of .NET, although the CLR supports other languages from day one.


Obligatory mention whenever anyone dicusses Sun's true motives for creating Java [1,2]. Sun's motives were anything but tidy. On Patrick Naughton's account, Sun's executive decision-making seems quite haphazard and opportunistic. Draw your own conclusions about the vagaries of individual perspectives or how typical this is of executive decision-making in general.

A line that might become amusing when you read the whole account:

> Thus began a long line of sporadic interjections by Bill [Joy| where he was right. He usually is.

[1]: http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/javaorigin.html

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30613578


Sun created Java to go against Microsoft, that isn't the discussion on the table, rather Kotlin and it being a guest language on the JVM, with a community that usually bashes the platform that made Kotlin possible to start with


It sounds like you are trying to find differences where there are none.

It also looks like you're forgetting that Java has been for years (decades) owned by Oracle, which is renowned for taking very public legal fights to milk Java to the extreme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....


Nah, that is Kotlin fanbase trying to move goalposts.

Java has been owned by Sun, and then Oracle, and it was more closed source during Sun's stewardship than Oracle's.

The first lawsuit was done by Sun against Microsoft, and they only missed the one against Google, because they were out of money by them.

Unfortunately Google got away with screwing up Sun, not happy with that, they keep using they flavoured Android Java when selling Kotlin's push into the ecosystem.

Still in all these years, Java was never used to sell Netbeans commercial licenses, regardless of how you to try to change the music.


> Still in all these years, Java was never used to sell Netbeans commercial licenses (...)

But that's completely irrelevant, isn't it? Cherry-picking aside, don't you understand how loss leaders work, and how companies use that strategy to push the sale of their cash cows?


Microsoft created the LSP to go against JetBrains :)


But Sun did invest in the creation and development of Java for the financial benefit of Sun. Jetbrains invested in Kotlin for the financial benefit of Jetbrains.


JetBrains wants to be like Borland, and like Borland is now getting beyond themselves and better not trip over.


Regardless, Jetbrains is in the business of selling dev tools. Any past present and future investment in Kotlin must be seen in this context.


They better take care not to fly too high with their Kotlin Platform.


what would flying too high mean in concrete terms? lock themselves into a tiny ecosystem?


> JetBrains wants to be like Borland, and like Borland is now getting beyond themselves and better not trip over.

I don't understand what Borland's history has to do with JetBrains' decision to invest their resources on adding support for a programming language to a third-party text editor.

Sounds like a non-sequitur of an unwarranted cheap shot that adds nothing to the discussion besides noise.


Touch grass. JetBrains is trying to be like Borland in the sense that JetBrains is doing with Kotlin what Borland did with Delphi. Create their own all-in-one-place programming ecosystem. You can see it slowly coalescing.


C# and .Net was for a very long time a Windows only thing, they were created to fight against Java so Microsoft can keep selling Windows licenses.

IMO this Microsoft stupidity to not open source .Net and FUD the open source alternatives costed them and the entire dev community a lot, we would have a good alternative for cross platform high level languages with a big framework (as alternative to JS+node+electron+npm+framewoks)


First class languages for the Windows Platform.


Sure, but they linked a good dev platform with an OS, this prevented .Net to become a much more used platform because most developers developed for Linux server using anything else then .Net (java,PHP,Python or the super shitty at that time JS and node). The open source community might have implemented an open alternative but only some parts of the language and platforms were open and there was a lot of fear that Mono that implemented some non open API could be a liability.

I personally was a big fan of C# and I can't forgive MS stupidity , because of the Windows Team a good language and platform was sabotaged, as I said it could have been a worthy competitor to JS/node especially in the past when JS was shit and even now where npm is filled with leftPads and colorRed packages.


They're pushing hard in that direction with https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blaz...

I don't think we've heard the last word yet.


JS/node are no competitors to .NET, not even close, only in the minds of script kiddies.


I only done desktop .Net apps so I can't judge, but even if I love the language and the standard library in .Net I would never had considered using it on a server if I had a choice, not because of quality but because of Microsoft bad treatment of the licenses an, the FUD and how they handled it. They managed to drag this platform down that js and node has probably more users and mind-share, they even had to "port "C#" and create TypeScript.

Btw, i did not implied anything about node or npm quality, someone that worked with both seriously in recent years might add their thoughts (so I am not a node fan just a C# lower disappointed on MS behavior).


Kotlin wasn't created to sell intelliJ, it had been the dominance IDE long before Kotlin inception. You found an article that happens to have that wording, that fits you hatred for some programming language. So you parroted the same argument all over this thread. Get a life.


C# was created in response to Java to keep developers in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Its effectivly the same thing, even though Microsofts goal wasn't selling visual studio, because they've got a much more lucrative cash cow: an operating system


Wrong.

.NET was going to use Java, when it was still codenamed as Ext-VOS.

It was the lawsuit against J++ that made C# a reality.


You didn't contradict my statement with that...

The motivation behind c# was keeping people in the Microsoft ecosystem. Wherever they attempted to use a rebranded jvm before that is entirely besides the point


Exactly. They ignored the Microsoft JVM, J++, J#, and the lawsuit around it that forced them to make C# and compete - rather than extinguish


> What exactly is the problem with this?

What if I want to continue using Emacs?


Don’t use Kotlin? Or just deal with the lack of language support.


Or use it, and accept that the language support is about as good as it usually is for Emacs? Emacs has never had the full range of features an IDE has.


That's a weird thing to say when for example Emacs+SLIME has had everything you wanted from a Lisp IDE for more than a decade.

There's literally no reason for not having full IDE experience in Emacs.


That's another reason why I don't like programming languages that need a specialized IDE. PLs should be simple. Not being able to use a language efficiently in any editor of your choice is like working with a programming language that needs specialized proprietary hardware to compile.


From 2011. I think their motivations have expanded quite a bit in the past 11 years, as has their commitment to the language, compilation targets and use cases.


Ironically that blog posts mentioned they created kotlin to not accept compromises in terms of compilation speed. I have found kotlinc's performance to be really bad




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