Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Introduction

The book "Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide" (second edition, 2021) is one of the most authoritative and practice-oriented guides to the Kotlin language. The authors — Andrew Bailey, David Greenhalgh, and Josh Skeen — are experienced instructors at the legendary Big Nerd Ranch school, known for its intensive iOS and Android development courses. This book is not just a reference, but a full-fledged training course that will take you from the very basics to advanced topics, including coroutines, functional programming, and building Android applications. At the time of the second edition's release, Kotlin had already become the official language for Android development, making the book especially relevant.

What the book is about

The book covers all of modern Kotlin, starting from basic syntax and ending with complex concepts such as coroutines, data flows (Flow), and Java interoperability. Each chapter is built on the principle of "practice first": you write code, solve problems, and only then delve into the theory. Main topics include:

• Data types, variables, conditional constructs, and loops
• Object-oriented programming: classes, interfaces, inheritance, composition
• Functional programming: lambdas, higher-order functions, immutability
• Working with collections and sequences
• Error handling and exceptions
• Coroutines and asynchronous programming
• Interoperability with Java code
• Creating