JetBrains launches Kotlin Basics, a free starter course on Kotlin

XDA

By Zachary Wander

Published Aug 12, 2021

JetBrains Academy is a service to help anyone learn to program. Today, JetBrains is launching the free Kotlin Basics course.

Back in 2019, JetBrains launched its Academy program. Academy lets anyone who wants to learn a language do so through guided lessons and projects, with integrations in JetBrains' IDEs. For instance, JetBrains advertises lessons in over 400 topics related to Java programming. In general, full JetBrains Academy courses cost money, while courses in beta are free. Today, however, JetBrains is launching Kotlin Basics.

Kotlin Basics

Kotlin Basics is a fully free JetBrains Academy course. As the name might imply, this course is all about getting people started in Kotlin. But this isn't just a couple lessons on how to print text and take input. Instead, JetBrains says it will have over 90 topics, 10 projects, and over 300 challenges.

Seeing as the full Java course has over 400 topics and the Kotlin Developer course has 187 topics, 90 is quite a few. JetBrains says that the entire Kotlin Basics course will take about 10 weeks, with five hours spent on it each week.

Again, Kotlin Basics is completely free. If you're someone who's just starting out in Kotlin (or programming in general), this is the course for you. If you've already got the basics down, you can also try out the paid Kotlin Developer course.

JetBrains Academy

In case Java and Kotlin aren't your thing, JetBrains also offers courses in Python and JavaScript. The JavaScript one is also currently in beta, which means it's free to use.

Otherwise, if you're interested in the paid courses, Academy costs $49.90/month or $249.00/year. If you're a student at an eligible school, you can get JetBrains Academy for 50% off.

Conclusion

Kotlin Basics is a pretty exciting addition to JetBrains Academy. This is obviously a completely personal opinion, but I think Kotlin is a great language, and it's nice to see an easy opportunity to learn it, straight from JetBrains.

If you're interested in trying Kotlin Basics or any of the other Academy courses, check out the JetBrains Academy website. You'll find more details on what's available and how everything works, along with how you can sign up.