Developers can now develop the business, network, and repository layer in Kotlin as a dependency module for native applications. This saves the additional effort of developers in learning two different programming languages. But now Kotlin has made it comparatively easy by supporting both. The LLVM compiler understands that Intermediate Representation and creates binaries for multiple platforms.īoth iOS and Android platforms have different approaches when it comes to native application development.

Kotlin/native is an LLVM (Low-Level Virtual Machine) based backend for Kotlin compiler that converts the Kotlin code to LLVM Intermediate Representation (IR). Kotlin/native is used for this purpose, which compiles the Kotlin code to native binaries that run without any virtual machine. Slowly, but steadily, it’s also growing popular for other platforms, including iOS application development. Since then, Kotlin has become the preferred language for Android application development. However, it wasn’t until May 2017 that Google announced its support of Kotlin, over a year after its first official stable version (Feb 2016). Kotlin came into existence in July 2011, a product of JetBrains.

Kotlin and Kotlin/Native: A Brief Overview Let’s take a step back and start at the beginning. Needless to say, Kotlin is well on the road to being a widely-used, multiplatform programming language.īut, I think I am getting ahead of myself. That’s is because it isn’t very often a programming language that gets adopted as a specialized framework for the Android platform, only to evolve to now support iOS.

However, today, I am going to focus on just one, Kotlin. These operating systems are all different and as such, require different frameworks, tools, and languages for application development. But what is really impressive is the operating system running on them because that is what makes the real magic happen. The smartphone in your pocket or that is sitting on your desk are impressive pieces of hardware in their own right, and keep you connected to your life and the people within it.

Kotlin for ios apps