Kotlin books

Edit pageLast modified: 25 September 2024

More and more authors write books for learning Kotlin in different languages. We are very thankful to all of them and appreciate all their efforts in helping us increase a number of professional Kotlin developers.

Here are just a few books we've reviewed and recommend you for learning Kotlin. You can find more books on our community website.

Atomic Kotlin

Atomic Kotlin is for both beginning and experienced programmers!

From Bruce Eckel, author of the multi-award-winning Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java, and Svetlana Isakova, Kotlin Developer Advocate at JetBrains, comes a book that breaks the language concepts into small, easy-to-digest "atoms", along with a free course consisting of exercises supported by hints and solutions directly inside IntelliJ IDEA!

Head First Kotlin

Head First Kotlin is a complete introduction to coding in Kotlin. This hands-on book helps you learn the Kotlin language with a unique method that goes beyond syntax and how-to manuals and teaches you how to think like a great Kotlin developer.

You'll learn everything from language fundamentals to collections, generics, lambdas, and higher-order functions. Along the way, you'll get to play with both object-oriented and functional programming.

If you want to really understand Kotlin, this is the book for you.

Kotlin in Action

Kotlin in Action teaches you to use the Kotlin language for production-quality applications. Written for experienced Java developers, this example-rich book goes further than most language books, covering interesting topics like building DSLs with natural language syntax.

The book is written by Dmitry Jemerov and Svetlana Isakova, developers on the Kotlin team.

Chapter 6, covering the Kotlin type system, and chapter 11, covering DSLs, are available as a free preview on the publisher web site.

Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

In this book you will learn to work effectively with the Kotlin language through carefully considered examples designed to teach you Kotlin's elegant style and features.

Starting from first principles, you will work your way to advanced usage of Kotlin, empowering you to create programs that are more reliable with less code.

Programming Kotlin

Programming Kotlin is written by Venkat Subramaniam.

Programmers don't just use Kotlin, they love it. Even Google has adopted it as a first-class language for Android development.

With Kotlin, you can intermix imperative, functional, and object-oriented styles of programming and benefit from the approach that's most suitable for the problem at hand.

Learn to use the many features of this highly concise, fluent, elegant, and expressive statically typed language with easy-to-understand examples.

Learn to write maintainable, high-performing JVM and Android applications, create DSLs, program asynchronously, and much more.

The Joy of Kotlin

The Joy of Kotlin teaches you the right way to code in Kotlin.

In this insight-rich book, you'll master the Kotlin language while exploring coding techniques that will make you a better developer no matter what language you use. Kotlin natively supports a functional style of programming, so seasoned author Pierre-Yves Saumont begins by reviewing the FP principles of immutability, referential transparency, and the separation between functions and effects.

Then, you'll move deeper into using Kotlin in the real world, as you learn to handle errors and data properly, encapsulate shared state mutations, and work with laziness.

This book will change the way you code — and give you back some of the joy you had when you first started.