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Pretty sure it’s the other way around: Kotlin was implemented on the JVM and that’s its primary target, and got a native implementation later for folks that don’t want to run a JVM.

by jayd165 hours ago|

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Is that relevant? Kotlin fully exists without the JVM, as requested.

by dathanb825 hours ago|

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Sort of? The kotlin standard library yes, but it’s pretty rare to write an app with only the standard library. It feels like you’re dismissing the Java interop as a secondary benefit, but for most uses of Kotlin it’s probably more important to project success than the language itself. So I think it’s accurate that without the JVM Kotlin would be essentially dead.

by jayd165 hours ago|

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> dismissing the Java interop as a secondary benefit

I mean, I don't really care about any of that. I was just responding to the (likely unserious) technical critique that there is no Kotlin VM. As for whether Kotlin as a language would be popular without the JVM, that's a different question.

by pjmlp4 hours ago|

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I stand by it until Kotlin Native is taken seriously, other than porting Android apps into iOS.

by pjmlp5 hours ago|

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A subset of Kotlin has a native backend, not good enough to power JetBrains products, which still require Java Virtual Machine.

It is so good, that JetBrains themselves rather use Rust or C++ for native code libraries on their IDEs, and not officially supported on the Android NDK.

by jayd165 hours ago|

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So the goal post is JetBrains has to rewrite their stack in Kotlin native for Kotlin to not need the JVM?

by pjmlp4 hours ago|

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The goal post is that Kotlin is able to stand on its own, without any dependency of JVM ecosystem, for its evolution as ecosystem.

A sign of maturity that Kotlin is grown enough to leave its parents foster home, and stand on its own without pay checks from its folks.

by oldsecondhand4 hours ago|

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Eating your own dogfood has always been a milestone of maturity.

by pjmlp5 hours ago|

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Nope, the JVM is the main platform, and also used for Android development, which by the way, still mostly uses Android Java on the platform code.

Kotlin Native came later, its memory model was incompatible with Java, thus breaking portability for libraries between JVM and Kotlin Native, thus Jet Brains had to reboot Kotlin Native memory model.

https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2021/05/kotlin-native-memo...

Currently it is mostly used to port Android code into iOS apps, hardly something that even JetBrains could show off running their IDEs on top off, nah, they still need the JVM.