Adopting Kotlin isn’t just a technical decision—it’s a team journey. In this talk, Brent and Jonathan will share why they chose Kotlin—highlighting cleaner syntax, built-in null-safety, and embracing immutability—and how they approached management to make the case successfully.

They’ll discuss the key decisions they made: keeping existing Java untouched initially, avoiding overly complex setups, and ensuring the entire team was onboard. They’ll briefly explore their initial setup with Gradle, handling mixed Kotlin and Java modules, and navigating Spring Boot integrations.

A significant part of their experience was shaped by concepts from “Refactoring Java to Kotlin,” guiding them to embrace Kotlin idioms naturally: single-expression functions, the strategic use of let, apply, and copy, leveraging extension functions, and exploring higher-order functions.

They’ll share honest insights into the challenges faced: Java interoperability surprises, Spring Boot integration quirks, IDE refactoring issues, and how they improved their lifecycle tests significantly by adopting Kotlin.

Looking back, they’ll highlight clear wins—cleaner, more expressive code and easier switches between front-end and backend as some annoyances they encountered, like delays in converting Java to Kotlin, dealing with companion objects, and managing Java and Kotlin within the same package.

Finally, they’ll share actionable advice for your Kotlin journey.

Brent and Jonathan are passionate software developers at Kunlabora, where they specialize in crafting fit-for-purpose software solutions in agile, small-team environments. With a shared commitment to clean code and pragmatic development practices, they thrive on solving complex problems through collaborative engineering.

Their recent discovery of Kotlin has been transformative, giving them a renewed sense of control over code expressivity and developer productivity. This journey from Java to Kotlin has not only enhanced their technical toolkit but also reinforced their belief in choosing the right tools for the right job. They’re excited to share their practical insights and real-world experiences with the Kotlin community.