> The Android ecosystem literally became the Kotlin ecosystem it was so successful.
The Android ecosystem became Kotlin ecosystem because Google said so, not because it was successful. There was a small hype around Kotlin during 2016, because: cool lambdas! type inference! extension functions! null-aware by default! And all the other small improvements, but ultimately it was Google pushing Kotlin down the throat of everyone that made it "official".
Oracle v Google beef, Java moving at a snails pace, lack of mobile focus, all of this were far more major contributors than Kotlin's language features. And of course those who were screaming at the top of their lungs that Java will catch up and overtake Kotlin were right.
> The multiplatform stuff came out of organic demand for re-using code at first between JVM backend and browser (Kotlin/JS), and then for re-using code between JVM, JS, Android and sharing the business logic on iOS, and then finally for being able to reuse UI code on iOS too for cases where native Swift UI can't be justified (obscure apps, etc).
The multiplatform stuff came out because JetBrains understood that being Android-only is a death march for their language. And you can't monetize Android developers, they use free Android Studio. Kotlin/JS is dead in the water, there's literally no reason to use it and even JetBrains themselves scaled down their investment dramatically into it. The only main target they set for themselves was capturing iOS market when they saw Flutter literally consuming the niche with outstanding dev experience despite mediocre language at the time (Dart).
> Seems to me like Kotlin Multiplatform has been quite successful actually.
By which metric?
> where they could have just used GraalVM Native Image
Sure. The hard part of iOS is the JIT ban, Native Image can make macOS binaries just fine.
> The Android ecosystem became Kotlin ecosystem because Google said so, not because it was successful
This is not how I remember events unfolding. I used Kotlin before Google ever talked about it and it was doing fine as a language for desktop and backend JVM apps. When Google started officially supporting it, it was just recognizing that Android developers were already organically adopting it at scale.
The Android ecosystem became Kotlin ecosystem because Google said so, not because it was successful. There was a small hype around Kotlin during 2016, because: cool lambdas! type inference! extension functions! null-aware by default! And all the other small improvements, but ultimately it was Google pushing Kotlin down the throat of everyone that made it "official".
Oracle v Google beef, Java moving at a snails pace, lack of mobile focus, all of this were far more major contributors than Kotlin's language features. And of course those who were screaming at the top of their lungs that Java will catch up and overtake Kotlin were right.
> The multiplatform stuff came out of organic demand for re-using code at first between JVM backend and browser (Kotlin/JS), and then for re-using code between JVM, JS, Android and sharing the business logic on iOS, and then finally for being able to reuse UI code on iOS too for cases where native Swift UI can't be justified (obscure apps, etc).
The multiplatform stuff came out because JetBrains understood that being Android-only is a death march for their language. And you can't monetize Android developers, they use free Android Studio. Kotlin/JS is dead in the water, there's literally no reason to use it and even JetBrains themselves scaled down their investment dramatically into it. The only main target they set for themselves was capturing iOS market when they saw Flutter literally consuming the niche with outstanding dev experience despite mediocre language at the time (Dart).
> Seems to me like Kotlin Multiplatform has been quite successful actually.
By which metric?
> where they could have just used GraalVM Native Image
On iOS?