Overview

Visual Basic

Stacks569

Followers514

Votes8

Kotlin

Stacks17.7K

Followers11.9K

Votes650

GitHub Stars51.5K

Forks6.1K

Kotlin vs Visual Basic: What are the differences?

Introduction

Kotlin and Visual Basic are two different programming languages used for different purposes. Understanding their key differences is essential when choosing a language for a specific project or application. In this comparison, we will highlight six key differences between Kotlin and Visual Basic.

Syntax and styling: Kotlin has a more concise and modern syntax compared to Visual Basic. It employs a curly brace syntax similar to Java, making it easier for developers familiar with Java or C# to transition to Kotlin. On the other hand, Visual Basic follows a verbose and more traditional syntax, which can be easier for beginners.
Platform compatibility: Kotlin is primarily used for developing Android applications but can also be used for back-end development and web applications. Visual Basic, on the other hand, is mainly used for developing Windows applications and does not have extensive support for other platforms.
Performance: Kotlin, being a statically-typed language, offers better performance compared to Visual Basic, which is dynamically-typed. The static typing in Kotlin allows for faster execution and better memory management, making it suitable for resource-intensive applications.
Type system: Kotlin has a more advanced type system compared to Visual Basic. It supports features like type inference, null-safety, and smart casts, which help catch errors at compile-time and reduce the likelihood of runtime exceptions. Visual Basic, on the other hand, has a simpler and more lenient type system.
Development tools and IDE support: Kotlin has excellent integration with popular IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio, providing a seamless development experience. Visual Basic has strong integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio, offering a comprehensive set of development tools specific to Windows-based applications.
Community and ecosystem: Kotlin benefits from a vibrant and growing community, with a wide range of libraries, frameworks, and resources available. It has gained significant adoption in the Android development community. Visual Basic, on the other hand, has a more mature ecosystem for Windows application development but may have fewer resources and community support compared to Kotlin.

In summary, Kotlin offers a more modern syntax, better platform compatibility, improved performance, advanced type system, superior development tools and IDE support, and a vibrant community. Visual Basic, on the other hand, provides a more traditional syntax, specialized support for Windows application development, and a mature ecosystem.

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Advice on Visual Basic, Kotlin

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k

Comments

Zuriel

Jun 7, 2020

Needs advice

Can anyone help me decide what's best for app development or even android Oreo development? I'm in a state dilemma at the moment. I want to do Android programming, not necessarily web development. I have heard a lot of people recommend one of these, and it seems that both the tools can do the job. Which language would you choose?

291k views291k

Comments

Liviu Florin

Principal Software Engineer at Dell Technologies

Dec 11, 2020

Review

Hi, Well...It depends. Take this with a grain of salt as I'm not a mobile app developer. I would weigh in some factors. If I would want to go fast, maybe I would make an Android app and use the language that I know, Java or even Kotlin. It really depends on how much time do you have. Alternatives to Flutter you can find here: https://buildfire.com/programming-languages-for-mobile-app-development/. As you already went with Firebase it might be a good option to stick with Flutter as they are both Google products and their integration might work more smoothly.
I would also take into account the job market in your area and your personal preference in order to raise your chances to find a good job after you graduate and use your project as actual work experience. I guess it would help to put in some specs related to what you are trying to build, as some frameworks are better suited to do one job, rather than others and hopefully get more specific answers.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Visual Basic	Kotlin
Visual Basic is derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects, and creation of ActiveX controls and objects.	Kotlin is a statically typed programming language for the JVM, Android and the browser, 100% interoperable with Java
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 51.5K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 6.1K
Stacks 569	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 514	Followers 11.9K
Votes 8	Votes 650
Pros & Cons
Pros 5 ALGOL-like syntax makes code more readable 3 XML Literals Cons 4 Specific to the microsoft platform	Pros 73 Interoperable with Java 55 Functional Programming support 51 Null Safety 46 Official Android support 44 Backed by JetBrains Cons 7 Java interop makes users write Java in Kotlin 4 Frequent use of {} keys 2 Nonullpointer Exception 2 Hard to make teams adopt the Kotlin style 1 No boiler plate code
Integrations
.NET	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Visual Basic, Kotlin?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.