A look at how both statically and dynamically typed languages have pros and cons and how we should identify the benefits and choose languages that provide the best of both...
The SOLID principles of software design provide guidelines on how we can make our code more readable, maintainable and extensible. They are universally accepted maxims that all engineers should understand...
In software, there is a constant tension between sufficiency - the need to say something in as few words as possible - and readability - the need to make things...
A look at how both statically and dynamically typed languages have pros and cons and how we should identify the benefits and choose languages that provide the best of both...
Last week my dear colleague Ryan wrote a blog post in praise of dynamic types. I would ask you not to judge him too harshly for this. It is a...
‘Effective Kotlin' follows in the long line of renowned Effective programming books. But is it a worthy addition to the series?’
Modern programming languages can be categorised in many ways, but the most common approach is to slice them by how they handle Types. Is using strong static typing a prerequisite...
The SOLID principles of software design provide guidelines on how we can make our code more readable, maintainable and extensible. They are universally accepted maxims that all engineers should understand...
In software, there is a constant tension between sufficiency - the need to say something in as few words as possible - and readability - the need to make things...
The Beginnings The Northern Ireland Developer Conference, or more commonly known as NI Dev Conf, first started in 2017 as a platform to bring together the progressively expanding meetup scene...
At Instil we absolutely love Kotlin. If you’re working on the JVM or Android, we see the move from Java to Kotlin as a complete no-brainer. Internally, we use it...
The Instil team have adopted Kotlin as our go to language for Android and server development. One of the unexpected side effects has been a significant boost in morale. It’s...
As another busy year of training draws to a close it's traditional that I stick my head above the parapet and make some predictions for the New Year. For what...
As an industry, we promote an education in science, technology, engineering and maths as the basis of software development, but in doing so, we risk ignoring the most important skill...
Community is a vital part of a successful software ecosystem, but what are the secrets to creating a successful meetup? In this post, we will explain how, through a mix...
The second ever KotlinConf took place in Amsterdam from 3rd-5th October 2018 and having missed last year’s event, the Instil team were looking forward to a thought-provoking conference over the...
The Kotlin type system is fairly flexible but there are a few corner cases where the compiler enforces rules which can be a little restrictive. In this article we explore...
In the upcoming Kotlin version 1.3, an experimental feature called inline classes will be introduced to the language. This helps address common errors caused by a developer when they rely...
