Stack Overflow: Kotlin entered the top 5 favorite languages of developers

March 18, 2020 — Stack Overflow platform published its annual developer survey, in which Kotlin entered the top five most loved programming languages for the first time.

According to the survey results, which involved more than 65,000 developers from 186 countries, Kotlin took 4th place in popularity among languages that respondents would like to use in the future. The language received 62.9% of the votes, surpassing industry pillars such as Java (44.1%) and Python (66.7% — took 2nd place).

"Kotlin is not just another language for Android. It is a modern, concise, and safe tool that solves many problems of Java. We see that the community has appreciated this," commented Alexey Fedorov, lead developer at JetBrains and one of the creators of the language.

Interestingly, Kotlin showed significant growth compared to 2019, when it ranked only 7th with 55.1%. According to the survey, the share of developers actively using Kotlin grew from 5.2% in 2019 to 7.1% in 2020. At the same time, 91% of respondents already working with Kotlin stated that they would continue to use it.

"Kotlin became the de facto standard for Android development after Google's announcement in 2019. But now we see it being used in backend and cross-platform projects as well," noted Mark Thompson, software engineer at Google, in his blog.

Among other key survey trends — TypeScript retained its leadership (67.1%), Python strengthened its position in Data Science, and Rust entered the top three most loved languages (3rd place, 64.3%).

Experts attribute Kotlin's success to its compatibility with Java, null safety, and support for functional programming. "Kotlin allows you to write less code and make fewer mistakes. This is especially valuable in large projects," added Fedorov.

The full Stack Overflow report is available on the platform's official website. The survey was conducted in February 2020.