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Microsoft announces Python formulas in Excel... which have to get sent to the cloud
(techcommunity.microsoft.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Ah, right.
That makes a lot more sense.
It's interesting that Kotlin is also seriously used for server-side rather than just for frontend work in Android: is was not aware of that.
Indeed Kotlin being created as a response for Swift is speculative. The timings (launched one after the other separated by about 1-2 years) and the launch target platforms (both main smartphone OSes) were peculiar, as are the characteristics of both languages (they roughly added the same things over the languages they replaced, though that was the kind of "need" OO developers had been feeling at around that time and quite a few options came out, both new languages and new features for existing languages), but I'm not privy to whatever behind-closed-doors discussions there were on that so don't really know for sure.
As you say, maybe indeed Kotlin was being developed in parallel and then for launch piggy-backed on Google's need for "it's own language" in the smartphone market in response to Apple having lauched their own with quite some success - as I pointed out, it makes business sense to try as much as possible to lock-in developers to your own platform - since it would make sense for JetBrains to launch with a big partner with a large installed based.
Kotlin was announced in 2011 and Swift was announced in 2014; that's 3 years apart. Like you said, they do look kinda similar but I think that's the result of being designed with 2010s principles.
Kotlin also didn't launch on a smartphone platform, it just kinda released with the build tools without any initial target platform. Since JetBrain already owns IDEA, the most popular Java IDE, they just bundled that with Kotlin to launch the language. I think it's the opposite, Google piggy-backed off JetBrain's fame and install base in response to the Swift thing instead of also developing a new language. It isn't a lock-in either, JetBrains is quite independent of Android though they did kinda lock the language server to IDEA.