COMPARISON OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT IN PROGRAM LANGUAGES JAVA AND KOTLIN FOR ANDROID PLATFORM

Pametni telefoni so vse bolj pomemben del našega vsakdanjika. Operacijski sistem Android je najbolj razširjen in popularen med uporabniki in razvijalci. V tem diplomskem delu smo raziskali možnosti razvoja aplikacij v okolju Android, ki se jih ponavadi piše v programskem jeziku Java. Na trgu pa se je pojavil nov programski jezik imenovan Kotlin. Zanimalo nas je, ali lahko ta nadomesti velikana Javo, kje je boljši, kje je primerljiv in kje je slabši. Predstavili smo lastnosti jezikov pri izdelavi aplikacij za platformo Android. Izdelali smo aplikaciji v obeh jezikih, da bi lahko primerjali njune sposobnosti in njun potek razvoja. Tehnične lastnosti smo primerjali glede na čas gradnje, porabo procesorske moči, porabo pomnilnika in število metod. Izdelali smo tudi enostavno anketo, ki je druge kolege povprašala, kaj si mislijo o jezikih. Ugotovili smo, da je programski jezik Kotlin primerljiv z jezikom Java v času inkrementalne gradnje, a je opazno počasnejši pri čisti gradnji aplikacije. Jezika sta primerljiva tudi glede na učinkovitost izvajanja, kar zajema porabo procesorske moči in porabo pomnilnika. Pri prevajanju jezika Kotlin z uporabo orodja ProGuard dobimo skoraj enako število metod kot pri prevajanju jezika Java. Rezultatov ankete so prikazali, da anketiranci menijo, da je Kotlin bolj berljiv kot Java. V delu smo zaključili, da je programski jezik Kotlin dobra alternativa jeziku Java. Kotlin rešuje mnoge probleme, s katerimi se srečujejo programerji aplikacij, napisanih v Javi. Kotlin nam omogoča, da pišemo berljivo izvorno kodo, kar pomeni lažjo krmarjenje in urejanje.Smart phones are becoming an important part of our every day life. The Android operating system is the most common and popular operating system amongst users and developers. In this work we studied the ways in which the Android application development are usually written in the Java programming language. There is a new programming language on the market called Kotlin. We wanted to find out if Kotlin could replace the giant Java, in which areas it is better, where it is comparable and where it is worse. We introduced the properties of both languages when developing applications for the Android platform. We created applications in both language to compare their compatabilities and workflow. We compared tehnical properties, which included build time, CPU usage, RAM usage and method count. We also carried out a simple survey, in which we questioned other colleagues about their thoughts on the two programming languages. We concluded that the Kotlin language is comparable with the Java language, when using incremental build, but is noticeably slower when using clean build. The two languages are comparable in effectiveness, including in CPU and RAM usage. When translating from Kotlin using the ProGuard tool, we achieved almost the same number of methods as we did when translating from Java. The results of the survey showed, that the respondents considered Kotlin to be more readable than Java. In this study we have concluded that the Kotlin programming language is a good alternative to Java. Kotlin solves many problems, which are dealt with by Java application programmers. Kotlin enables us to write a readable source code, which means easier navigation and editing