Chevron Left
Back to Kotlin for Java Developers

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Kotlin for Java Developers by JetBrains

4.7
stars
2,022 ratings

About the Course

The Kotlin programming language is a modern language that gives you more power for your everyday tasks. Kotlin is concise, safe, pragmatic, and focused on interoperability with Java code. It can be used almost everywhere Java is used today: for server-side development, Android apps, and much more. Kotlin is 100% compatible with all existing Java frameworks, and has good tooling support. It’s a pragmatic language with a very low learning curve, and can be quickly grasped by Java developers. Kotlin code might be compiled not only to JVM bytecode but to JavaScript and Native code as well, but this course is focused on Kotlin/JVM. This course aims to share with you the power and the beauty of Kotlin. We'll have a basic overview of the language, as well as a discussion of many corner cases, especially concerning Java interoperability. The course is based on your Java experience; it shows the similarities between the two languages and focuses on what's going to be different. Note that this course won't cover the programming fundamentals. We'll discuss: basic syntax, nullability, functional programming with Kotlin, object-oriented programming with Kotlin, the power of the Kotlin standard library, and Java interoperability....

Top reviews

MA

Jun 28, 2019

Excellent course, packed with relevant content and useful hands on Kotlin exercises with great feedback based on Coursera provided unit tests. Looking forward to more Coursera courses from JetBrains.

AC

Mar 15, 2020

Thanks JetBrains team, the course is as great as all the things that you do!

Now I am going to visit Kotlin island (Kronstadt) to see lighthouse on your logo (I leave nearby in Saint-Petersburg).

Filter by:

26 - 50 of 486 Reviews for Kotlin for Java Developers

By Alba B R

Jun 30, 2019

El curso es muy completo y aprendes muchas carácterísticas sobre Kotlin adaptadas a programadores de Java. Por otra parte los ejercicios son complejos y requieren de mucho conocimiento de algoritmia.

By Matteo A

Apr 28, 2020

The course is not too bad, it's interesting and easy to understand for someone with a background in java programming. The assignments are not always well targeted in my opinion as they focus on algorithm and not on the language. Unfortunately I had the feeling that the more tricky topics have been covered very quickly and they were not given the time they deserved. The accent of the teacher is not ideal but I would say almost completely comprehensible for an average english speaker. Overall I don't think it's worth the money (considering it's pretty expensive imo) since you can easily pick up the same concepts with any online tutorial.

By Claudio A

Sep 8, 2021

I recommend this course for developers who already know a bit of Kotlin (it's not an introductory course and the video lessons are not always very clear).

The assignments could be improved, because they are a bit out of context and require to spend too much time just to understand the requirements.

By Andrew N

Aug 8, 2019

The assignments could have been a wee bit simpler, though they do test aspects of your knowledge of Kotlin, it felt like it was more of a test of your knowledge of algorithms with a lesser focus on using the concepts you just learned.

By Holger S

Aug 11, 2019

Starts really good, but with week 4, it seems like Jetbrains lost interest in the course. Week 1-3 will show you the “kotlinish” way after the assignments, but after that, the only feedback you get is if the unit test passed or not.

By Yassine B J

Sep 3, 2023

The language used in this course is difficult for a non-native English speaker

By Aleksei B

Jan 10, 2022

Нет русской версии курса (при том что создатели явно говорят на русском), задания недоэстимированы и в одном из них написано "если что-то непонятно, то смотрите в юнит тесты" - лол. Непонятно почему нельзя было задания сделать меньше по объему и больше про котлин. Сиалед каласы использовать и другие прикольные фичи. Это же курс для джавистов (судя по названию), они уже умеют кодить.

By Gavin P

Nov 11, 2020

I despised this class, but it is hard to argue against it completeness. This is a tough class.

The best things: The Scope/Auxiliary Functions. Live them, Learn them, Love them - pay attention to Week05. I actually became a better Java programmer while trying to get my feet unstuck from all the Kotlin mud you have to walk through to understand those functions. Extension functions are also nice, although not used as much as I would have imagined. The main presenter is amazing, she always seems to be one step ahead of a question you may have.

The worst things: You will hear the word "concise" a lot, do not be fooled. Kotlin is anything but concise. (1) It seems to be designed to become an endless buffet-table of every possible desire and wish for any API call you ever wanted. Good luck maintaining "concise" Kotlin code. (2) Kotlin is not "precise". This course seems to argue that removing type-declarations, return types, argument types, etc is good programming practice and called "concise". How is it "concise" to come back a week later and have to rely on mousing over statements in the IDE to see what hints the IDE provides? That is not programming, that is an IDE telling you what you should have done, what you should do, or will eventually do. As someone new to Kotlin I do not like Kotlin as a language, but this class is really amazing, well produced, and totally complete, prepare for a lot of work.

By Thomas W

Nov 18, 2018

I overall enjoyed the course and found it very helpful for a Java developer starting with Kotlin. I'm looking forward to more courses from JetBrains, especially one on coroutines.

At first it bothered me a little that Svetlana was speaking freely (i.e. not reading a script), because she often interrupts mid-sentence and starts over. But in the end I'm thankful that she did it that way, because it's a refreshing difference to the often sterile presentations found with other courses. You can almost "hear" her thinking. There's this one moment somewhere in week 5, where you can hear her frustration over not being able to transform her thought into speech at first try. It feels authentic.

For me, the time estimates given for the assignments in Week 4 and especially 5 was too low. It took me more time. The assignments were not too difficult, but the pursuit of finding an idiomatic solution took more time.

By Faisal M

Jan 20, 2019

It was a wonderful experience to learn Kotlin from Kotlin designers. I am now a big fan of Andrey Breslav and Svetlana Isakova. Thank you guys! Completing this course was not an easy job for me although I have prior experience in Java. The assignments were comprehensive and required a lot of effort in terms of algorithms and Kotlin syntax. I am feeling happy that I have learnt core concepts of Kotlin as well as functional programming. Besides the syllabus of this course, I also watch Andrey on Youtube to get to know about the latest addition in Kotlin "the coroutines". I'll also try to convince my colleagues and management to give Kotlin a try. Let's see!

By Mateusz K

Aug 7, 2022

It was a very good Kotlin introduction course. I liked how lectures are interrupted by small quiz questions - this allows to better memorize the material presented. The assignments were really fun and challenging! The only small flaw that I can mention is that there's slightly too much advanced maths/algorithmics in assignments. It would be better to have some parts already implemented, but e.g. task could be to refactor them to Kotlin style. This way we could focus more on Kotlin instead of focusing on solving some algorithms. Anyway, the course was great, I strongly recommend it and can't wait to take another courses from our lecturers! :)

By Vignessh V

Sep 30, 2022

I took this course with the assumption that I'll be learning a little bit of Kotlin to keep my feet wet. Instead, this turned out to be a deep course on the basics of the language. The weekly challenges were enjoyable and helped exercise my brain and provide that much needed focus. I would heartily recommend this course to anyone who's familiar with Java who intends to also program in Kotlin. This also touches upon functional style of solving problems vs. the conventional imperative style we are familiar with in Java. I feel that will be key in order to not just use the language but also write idiomatic functional style code in Kotlin.

By Francisco J R A

Apr 8, 2021

I loved this course, contains clear and structured info about the main topics of language. But i think that is not course for beginners, i have worked with JAVA about five year, i have experience developement with PL/SQL, PG/SQL, JAVAEE, React Native, JSF, Hibernate, etc. But this course in my opinion is very hard, it's not enougth with the course material, you need to deep in another conceps for resolve the last tasks and read all week discusions for try to understand the assignment. I finish happy and with the idea that still much to learn. Thank you so much to instructors in special to Svetlana Isakova.

By Marcin I

Nov 18, 2018

It was fun to play with Kotlin for the first time. The course is short but seems to cover everything I need to start writing code in Kotlin. The material is well-structured and the exercises quite entertaining. Svetlana is active on the forum and helps to solve all technical difficulties one might face. Highly recommend everyone who wants to take their first steps in Kotlin. Thank you very much for the course! I enjoyed it a lot. PS I'd love to see more courses like that from JetBrains i.e. covering coroutines and Kotlin Native.

By Jörg V

Oct 31, 2018

I think the course videos explain everything very well! The tasks are fortunately not too simple, so you are forced to code (what's good). I recommend this course for all developers with programming experience who want to get to know a really nice programming language.

One comment to this Guy who has only awarded one star due to linguistic deficiencies: How does it matter? I come from Germany and of course I have a German accent, so what? I understood everything Svetlana explained, I guess you did too!

By Borja B A

Jan 7, 2021

After quite a few courses in Coursera this is one of the best ones. I really liked to be able to unlock the solutions and see how it could be improved. It was a piece by piece work. While the programming tasks were no trivial at no point I felt locked or doing repetitive work. Questions during the videos were relevant. The only issues I had was some compiler errors with the grading system for using a diferent version of kotlin but I had a good feedback message and was able to solve it by myself.

By Stefan Z

Mar 28, 2020

I learned a lot about Kotlin from this course. This course talks about the features of the language such as extension functions, safe casts, data classes, etc; it also teaches a lot of useful techniques to use this language in its proper functional manner. I highly recommend this course to those who have experience with Java and would like to add a new direction to their skills. It is a major plus that this course is taught directly by the creators of Kotlin themselves.

By Alexander S

Apr 8, 2019

After taking this course I fell like I have a deeper understanding in how to develop real-world application in Kotlin. The content is very exhaustive and very well covered. Short quizzes inside the videos help to instantly repeat and deepen the understanding of important concepts. The assignments are challenging but also help deepen the knowledge. I would also call them quite near to real-problems. The Integration into IntelliJ makes working on the assignments a breeze.

By Jade F

Dec 7, 2018

This is a course featuring explanations by Kotlin's core designers! It utilizes an educational plugin for intellij that allows for you to submit assignments from the ide.

This course is fun, the videos are concise and concrete, and the insight you gain from Andrey Breslav about the design philosophy of Kotlin is valuable. I would recommend the course, but be forewarned that it requires some investment in study so you understand and remember the language syntax.

By Iskandar M

Jun 11, 2019

Well-built course, informative, very useful in-video understading-check questions & also the playgrounds between videos. Weekly assignments are fulfilling and cover much of the needed knowledge & skills to be gained. All in all, I got much deeper understanding of Kotlin & Java also.

Looking forward for more courses from JetBrains, especially about Kotlin for Android & web/servers. Might , as well, use "Kotlin Everywhere" afterwards.

By Yuri S

Mar 23, 2020

I learned many concepts and fundamentals that will be useful for me to stand out in a job interview regarding the Kotlin language, such as:

- The history of Kotlin

- Variables

- Functions

- Named and default arguments

- When

- In checks and ranges

- Exceptions

- Extensions

- Kotlin nullable types

- Kotlin functional programming

The material was very good and helped me a lot throughout the course.

Continue providing high-quality courses :)

By Andrew B

Sep 25, 2020

This course does a good job of explaining how Kotlin is different from Java and covers important compatibility issues. There were a number of project assignments I found challenging and provided a good opportunity to apply material covered in the course. Overall, I discovered programming in Kotlin can be fun and also I gained new insights in into how a computer language can have a positive impact on productivity and quality.

By yohan m

Mar 21, 2020

great contents, I really love this course, jetbrains guys are the right ones to introduce us into kotlin, I found the assignments kind of complicated to accomplish in 5h, sometimes it takes much more time because you need no dig a lot into videos and kotlin official documentation to fulfill the requirements, but at the end of the day the provided tests helps a lot to create the solutions in a TDD way, Great work!

By satish

May 1, 2020

This is best course in the world as i learn a lots of new skill and new topics like lambda and Extensions Functions and best practice of code and make code efficient and best way to code and great things is i learn methods when i show video and give answer the question is the best i learn a lot from this methods and great things is weekly assignments also. thank you very much to Coursera and Team of this course.

By Бондарев И

Jul 17, 2020

This course is great. It is very pleasant to listen to the lecturer, there are many detailed and well-developed examples. However, the complexity of the tasks performed changes too quickly. You may be asked to repeat what the lecturer just said, and then asked to write a dozen functions through lambdas. Although, I think this is just my personal experience. I give 5 and recommend to all Java developers.