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It will, because that is the fate of every guest language since the dawn of times.

The "systems" language of the platform, evolves with the platform, is designed alongside the platform.

The guest languages might be better than the platform's "systems" language, on the day of the release, eventually it is bound to diverge with its own library ecosystem built on top (because "ugh" we're not using the platform libraries directly), its own IDE tooling, its additional debugging layer due to platform interop, its own abstractions not native to the platform,.....

Eventually it naturally diverges as the platform takes incompatible decisions,...

C and C++ on UNIX, JavaScript and anything compiles to JS, Java vs Groovy/Scala/Clojure/Kotlin/jTCL/Beanshell/jython/...., C# vs VB.NET/F#/C++/CLI/IronPython/IronRuby,...

The guest languages that are survive, are those that move beyond the platform that gave them birth and create a platform of their own.

In Kotlin's case that is definitely Android, because Android team is doing everything at their disposal to make Java a 2nd class language on Android, rewriting Jetpack libraries in Kotlin, requiring Kotlin for Compose, showing off Kotlin code samples against Java 8 examples(!), I bet they only starting updating Java support, because Android was starting to lose too many Java libraries as the Java ecosystem adopts new versions.

Still, Android 15 being released one year later from Java 21 LTS, is still catching up with Java 17 LTS, introduced in Android 13 and not yet fully implemented, kind of proves the point of them not being in a hurry for proper Java support on the platform.



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