Benchmarking Java and Kotlin in Android Runtime environment
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Abstract
In 2017, Google announced that the Kotlin Programming Language would become an official Android Development language. In the meantime, it has become one of the fastest-growing programming languages. In this study, we studied the trade-offs between using Kotlin and what was officially the Android programming language, Java. This study focuses on seeing if there are differences between Java and Kotlin in execution speeds, Application size, and lines of code. To analyze the trade-offs, we wrote two Android Apps, one using only Java, and the other using only Kotlin. To measure runtime, we wrote 5 commonly used algorithms using the same datasets. Each algorithm was executed 100 times; then, the time was averaged. To measure Application size, we analyzed the final app result. Finally, to measure lines of code, we looked at the final app using an Android Studio plugin called ”Statistic.” After project completion, we found that both languages have pros and cons. Specifically, we found that, on average, Java is faster than Kotlin at executing code by about 20%. We also found the Java Android App to be smaller than Kotlin by about 39%. However, Kotlin does have one good thing going for it, which is lines of code. On average, writing code with the same purpose was about 19% shorter in Kotlin code than Java code. In conclusion, this study found that if Android application developers want a slightly faster app or want their app to take up a little less space, Java may be the language to consider. But, if application developers want to develop features faster, Kotlin is the way to go due to it performing the same tasks with less lines of code.