Why Did Developers Migrate Android Applications From Java to Kotlin?

Currently, the majority of apps running on mobile devices are Android apps developed in Java. However, developers can now write Android applications using a new programming language: Kotlin, which Google adopted in 2017 as an official programming language for developing Android apps. Since then, And...

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Veröffentlicht in:IEEE transactions on software engineering Jg. 48; H. 11; S. 4521 - 4534
Hauptverfasser: Martinez, Matias, Gois Mateus, Bruno
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: New York IEEE 01.11.2022
IEEE Computer Society
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Schlagworte:
android
Applications programs
Codes
Computer languages
Computer Science
Electronic devices
Internet
Interviews
Java
Kotlin
Migration
mining repositories
mobile development
Open source software
Programming languages
qualitative study
software evolution
Mining repositories
Java
Software evolution
Mobile development
Qualitative study
Migration
Android
Kotlin
ISSN:0098-5589, 1939-3520
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Abstract Currently, the majority of apps running on mobile devices are Android apps developed in Java. However, developers can now write Android applications using a new programming language: Kotlin, which Google adopted in 2017 as an official programming language for developing Android apps. Since then, Android developers have been able to: a) start writing Android applications from scratch using Kotlin, b) evolve their existing Android applications written in Java by adding Kotlin code (possible thanks to the interoperability between the two languages), or c) migrate their Android apps from Java to Kotlin. This paper aims to study this last case. We conducted a qualitative study to find out why Android developers have migrated Java code to Kotlin and to bring together their experiences about the process, in order to identify the main difficulties they have faced. To execute the study, we first identified commits from open-source Android projects that have migrated Java code to Kotlin. Then, we emailed the developers that wrote those migrations. We thus obtained information from 98 developers who had migrated code from Java to Kotlin. This paper presents the main reasons identified by the study for performing the migration. We found that developers migrated Java code to Kotlin in order to access programming language features (e.g., extension functions, lambdas, smart casts) that are not available with Java for Android development, and to obtain safer code (i.e., avoid null-pointer exceptions). We also identified research directions that the research community could focus on in order to help developers to improve the experience of migrating their Java applications to Kotlin.
AbstractList Currently, the majority of apps running on mobile devices are Android apps developed in Java. However, developers can now write Android applications using a new programming language: Kotlin, which Google adopted in 2017 as an official programming language for developing Android apps. Since then, Android developers have been able to: a) start writing Android applications from scratch using Kotlin, b) evolve their existing Android applications written in Java by adding Kotlin code (possible thanks to the interoperability between the two languages), or c) migrate their Android apps from Java to Kotlin. This paper aims to study this last case. We conducted a qualitative study to find out why Android developers have migrated Java code to Kotlin and to bring together their experiences about the process, in order to identify the main difficulties they have faced. To execute the study, we first identified commits from open-source Android projects that have migrated Java code to Kotlin. Then, we emailed the developers that wrote those migrations. We thus obtained information from 98 developers who had migrated code from Java to Kotlin. This paper presents the main reasons identified by the study for performing the migration. We found that developers migrated Java code to Kotlin in order to access programming language features (e.g., extension functions, lambdas, smart casts) that are not available with Java for Android development, and to obtain safer code (i.e., avoid null-pointer exceptions). We also identified research directions that the research community could focus on in order to help developers to improve the experience of migrating their Java applications to Kotlin.
Author Martinez, Matias
Gois Mateus, Bruno
Author_xml – sequence: 1
  givenname: Matias
  orcidid: 0000-0002-2945-866X
  surname: Martinez
  fullname: Martinez, Matias
  email: matias.martinez@uphf.fr
  organization: Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, Valenciennes, France
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  givenname: Bruno
  surname: Gois Mateus
  fullname: Gois Mateus, Bruno
  email: brunomateus@ufc.br
  organization: Federal University of Ceará - Campus of Quixad, Quixadá, Brazil
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Cites_doi 10.1109/ICSE-Companion.2019.00043
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Issue 11
Keywords Mining repositories
Java
Software evolution
Mobile development
Qualitative study
Migration
Android
Kotlin
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SubjectTerms android
Applications programs
Codes
Computer languages
Computer Science
Electronic devices
Internet
Interviews
Java
Kotlin
Migration
mining repositories
mobile development
Open source software
Programming languages
qualitative study
software evolution
Title Why Did Developers Migrate Android Applications From Java to Kotlin?
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