Kotlin Books Review from the backend developer perspective

by coding flower

I've already read some books related to the Kotlin language so I can make a short review.

Kotlin In Action

You can buy this book here.

  • For whom? For beginners, excellent for the first touch with the language.
  • When is it worth reading? At the beginning of your journey with Kotlin.

Authors: Dmitry Jemerov and Svetlana Isakova, developers on the Kotlin team.

This book was the first book that I ever read about Kotlin. The knowledge included in this book was enough to create backend services.

Effective Kotlin

You can buy this book here.

  • For whom? If you have some experience in Kotlin and you would like to know more advanced stuff.
  • When is it worth reading? From my point of view, you should read this book right after Kotlin In Action.

Author: Marcin Moskała.

If you come from the Java world you probably noticed that this title is very similar to the popular book Effective Java written by Joshua Bloch. This similarity is not insignificant because Effective Kotlin has the same structure as Effective Java, but all topics describe in the book are Kotlin related instead of Java. Best-practices for Kotlin's development.

Joy Of Kotlin

You can buy this book here.

  • For whom? Advanced developers, fluent with Kotlin.
  • When is it worth reading? If you want to start functionally writing Kotlin code.

Author: Pierre-Yves Saumont

Long story short, functional programming in Kotlin, a lot of exercises and examples. I don't recommend this book if you looking for a book to start with Kotlin. To be honest the most difficult book about Kotlin that I ever read, but before reading this book I've never touch functional programming.

Learning Concurrency In Kotlin

  • For whom? Android developers, will learn some concurrency features in Kotlin.
  • When is it worth reading? If you want to use concurrency in Kotlin, but all examples are related to mobile development.

Author: Miguel Angel Castiblanco Torres

You are guided by the author through the process of creating a mobile application using coroutines and other Kotlin specific concurrency features.

Summary

  • If you java developer I recommend Kotlin In Action. After reading this book, you will be able to use Kotlin on your daily basis.
  • If you already made your hands dirty with Kotlin, I would suggest reading the Effective Kotlin, you will gain knowledge of how to write your code in a more Kotlin way.
  • If you are looking for advanced topics and functional programming choose Joy Of Kotlin but be aware that, this book is really difficult, especially if you never touch functional programming.

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