Kotlin assimilating the Android ecosystem: An appraisal of diffusion and impact on maintainability

IF 3.7 2区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Journal of Systems and Software Pub Date : 2025-01-21 DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2025.112346

Riccardo Coppola, Tommaso Fulcini, Luca Ardito, Marco Torchiano

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Abstract

Kotlin was introduced in 2011 as an alternative to the Java programming language, promising to address many of its predecessor’s limitations and positioning itself as a better option for application maintainability. In 2017, Kotlin became a first-class language for Android application development, complete with extensive tool support.

This paper aims to empirically assess the diffusion of Kotlin in developing Android applications and to investigate the impact of Kotlin adoption on application maintainability.

We mined 2708 open-source Android applications from F-Droid, focusing on the extent of Kotlin code presence, their popularity, and maintainability. This analysis adopted a set of six code metrics proxies.

The proportion of applications developed with Kotlin, either in conjunction with Java or exclusively, has continuously increased over the past five years. Currently, Kotlin is used in approximately 40% of the projects. The adoption of Kotlin in application development appears to be linked to greater popularity among end-users and developers when compared to the applications written in Java. Notably, the exclusive use of Kotlin in projects significantly enhances all the considered code maintainability metrics.

We conclude that Kotlin is rapidly gaining ground in the Android ecosystem. This trend is likely due to Kotlin’s fulfilment of its promise as a superior alternative to Java, particularly in terms of maintainability.

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来源期刊

Journal of Systems and Software 工程技术-计算机：理论方法

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

5.70%

发文量

193

审稿时长

16 weeks

期刊介绍： The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: •Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution •Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development •Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems •Human factors and management concerns of software development •Data management and big data issues of software systems •Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources •Business and economic aspects of software development processes The journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.