JetBrains has made special arrangements with Spring to facilitate the framework's better integration with the Kotlin language. What can we expect from this new partnership?

It's been some time since Kotlin surpassed the boundaries of its Mobile first mentality. As noted when reviewing the recent KotlinConf's opening keynote :

The gist of it is that Kotlin has matured, is used in production, is modern, and can be used to write multi-platform applications thanks to KMP. Lately it also has put eyes on the server side. Should Java be worried?

And server side it is when bringing in the Spring framework.
While Kotlin already plays well along with the framework, like making the writing of Spring application code easier,
fostering first-class coroutine support as well as Kotlin and Java files modules happily coexisting within the same package and calling from one language to the other seamlessly, this new partnership promises much more.

Besides the small but dedicated JetBrains' team that builds Spring extensions specific to Kotlin, i.e. so that you can for instance build co-routines in Spring as naturally as anywhere else that you write Kotlin for, the key areas of this collaboration are:

• Full null safety for Kotlin and Spring apps
  Enhancing Kotlin's null safety across the framework. This will strengthen type safety in Kotlin Spring code without requiring additional configuration.
• Official learning materials in Kotlin
  Core Spring learning resources will be made available in Kotlin, helping developers to get started more easily and adopt idiomatic Kotlin practices from the start.
  My guess is that Spring Academy will update its courses to cover Kotlin as well.
• Faster Kotlin reflection with kotlinx.reflect
  A faster version of Jetbrains reflection library which improves performance in scenarios that rely heavily on reflection, such as dependency injection and serialization.
• Evolving configuration DSLs
  A new Bean Registration DSL which will provide the foundation for better support for lambda and DSL-based bean definition.

While Kotlin is not yet being considered as the top option for backend development, and is mostly getting adopted for greenfield projects, it is slowly but steadily getting there. This strategic partnership shows that the Spring team is also looking in that direction by investing resources on it. To that end, tutorials that show how to migrate a Java Spring backend to Kotlin will play a crucial role.

Really, should Java be worried?

More Information

Strengthening Kotlin for Backend Development: A Strategic Partnership With Spring

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