23-Dec

Kotlin

Resources for Learning Kotlin

There are many ways of getting started with learning Kotlin, different people learn best from different approaches. Whether it's reading books, solving code puzzles, getting practical experience or watching talks I hope this blogpost helps you find some interesting resources.

3 min read

·

By Vegard Veiset

·

December 23, 2020

Documentation

One good way to both start learning Kotlin and honing your already existing skills is to use the official Kotlin documentation. The getting started guide is a great place to start, while the Kotlin reference page is a good tool to get an overview of subjects, and often points you in the right direction on where to dig for more information. An example of this is the Kotlin coding conventions that can help you if you’re a little unsure if you've structured your code in a good way.

Coding and puzzles

If you’re learning more by doing practical stuff another way of honing your Kotlin skills is to do code puzzles, or koans, to get familiar with the language. The official Kotlin Koans comes with an online editor making the setup and learning curve minimal.

If you have some more time to spare, doing workshops can be a great way to get started with a new language. There are multiple workshops to choose from but I can recommend both the Kotlin Workshop by Jetbrains and the Kotlin Workshop we’ve created at Bekk.

Another great way of learning Kotlin is to have a side project where you can experiment with everything you find interesting and explore the language without having any hard requirements you need to meet.

Videos

There are many talks about Kotlin online so it can be a little hard to find the perfect talk for your needs, but if you’re unsure where to look for some great content the recorded talks from Kotlinconf is a good place to start. Below are some suggestions about talks that I’ve found are worth while watching.

Introduction to Kotlin by Hadi is a great introduction video if you’re new to Kotlin.

If you feel you’ve learned the basics of Kotlin but are unsure which new shiny syntax to use, and which syntax that might cause more headaches down the line you should check out Putting Down the Golden Hammer by Huyen.

If you feel like you’ve mastered the basics of Kotlin The Power of types by Danny is a great talk exploring how you can use Kotlin types to your benefit. It goes in depth on how types can help us make our code more readable and less error prone.

Testing: Testing by Christina is a great talk about testing in Kotlin and how Kotlin types help you reduce some of the mundane parts of testing code.

If you want to go beyond the basics and learn more about some of the more advanced topics Beyond the Basics by Hadi is a great place to start.

Summary

There are loads of resources for you to get started out there, so I hope this post has helped you find some new resources that can be of help when learning the Kotlin programming language.