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Developed by JetBrains, a Czech-based software development company, Kotlin is a static programming language for modern multi-platform applications.

Sponsored by JetBrains and Google, through the Kotlin Foundation, JetBrains is officially supported by Google for mobile development on Android. Kotlin is included as an alternative to the standard Java compiler for Android Studio.

The first version of Kotlin was released by JetBrains in 2011, after about a year of development. Designed as a new language for the Java Virtual Machine, its chief competitor was Scala. The lead designer of Kotlin cited the slow compilation time of Scala as a deficiency and promised that Kotlin would compile as quickly as Java. In 2012, Kotlin was open-sourced under the Apache License. In 2017, Google announced its support of the language, declaring it the preferred language for Android application developers in 2019.

Kotlin can be compiled into either Java bytecode or JavaScript to run on a device without a JVM. Advantages cited included that Kotlin is more secure than Java, and is able to statically detect common pitfalls. It is also said to be more concise than Java, achieved through the variable type inference.

Kotlin is also said to be an intuitive language, easy to learn, with most of its programming similar to that of Java. It can be mixed with the Java language, using codes and libraries written by Java because the two languages are interoperable. It fully integrates with the Java IDE without configuration. The IDE is able to understand and to run Kotlin code flawlessly. In fact, it can be built from any Java IDE or from the command line. It can take advantage of existing libraries in the JVM, Android, and in browsers.

Kotlin's functions may be extended, which means that users can extend more features of the class, and the code in the class. It is functional, object-oriented, and uses many of the concepts of functional programming.

Installation requires the installation of Oracle's Java Development Kit first, as the JDK contains all Java class libraries, all tool building and running Java programs. The JDK can create a Java development environment.

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