The best books to learn Kotlin in 2023
The best books to start learning this incredible programming language

This is a list of the best books to learn Kotlin, for beginners and advanced developers. For Android Developers, learning Kotlin is a must.
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Atomic Kotlin
- Authors: Bruce Eckel & Svetlana Isakova
- Year: 2021
- Buy on Amazon: Paperback

For both beginning and experienced programmers! From the author of the multi-award-winning “Thinking in C++” and “Thinking in Java” together with a member of the Kotlin language team comes a book that breaks the concepts into small, easy-to-digest “atoms,” along with exercises supported by hints and solutions directly inside IntelliJ IDEA!
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 authors are core Kotlin developers, so you can trust that even the gnarly details are dead accurate.
Kotlin Coroutines: Deep Dive

Kotlin coroutines have revolutionized JVM development, especially on Android and the backend, as they let us easily implement efficient and reliable multithreading. Their cutting-edge design and features are ideally suited to modern use cases. In this book, we will explore how Kotlin coroutines work and how we can use them to improve our applications — using both the built-in support and the kotlinx.coroutines library.
This is a practical book. It shows everything by examples and focuses on real-life use cases. As this technology is already widely used on Android and backend applications, we will see how we can use it there and what the best practices are.
Mastering Kotlin

This Kotlin book will show you how to leverage software designs and concepts that have made Java the most dominant enterprise programming language. You’ll understand how Kotlin is a modern approach to object-oriented programming (OOP). This book will take you through the vast array of features that Kotlin provides over other languages. These features include seamless interoperability with Java, efficient syntax, built-in functional programming constructs, and support for creating your own DSL. Finally, you will gain an understanding of implementing practical design patterns and best practices to help you master the Kotlin language.
Head First Kotlin: A Brain-Friendly Guide

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 Cookbook: A Problem-Focused Approach

The overall focus of the book is not only to teach Kotlin syntax and semantics but also to show you when and why a particular feature should be used. The goal isn’t necessarily to cover every detail of Kotlin’s syntax and libraries. In the end, however, many recipes on basic principles were added to make the book understandable even to readers with only a beginning level of Kotlin knowledge.
Android Programming with Kotlin for Beginners

With this book, you’ll explore the Android 10 (Q) update, and get up to speed with building apps that are compatible with this version.
This book adopts a project-based approach, where you’ll focus on the fundamentals of Android app development and the essentials of Kotlin by building three real-world apps and a variety of mini-apps. You’ll begin by understanding how Kotlin and Android work together before gradually moving onto exploring the various Android APIs for building stunning apps for Android with ease.
Kotlin In-Depth Vol I & Vol II
- Author: Aleksei Sedunov
- Year: 2020
- Buy Vol I on Amazon: Paperback | Kindle
- Buy Vol II on Amazon: Paperback | Kindle


The purpose of this book is to guide a reader through the capabilities of Kotlin language and give examples of how to use it for the development of various applications, be it desktop, mobile or Web. Although the primary focus is on JVM and Android, the knowledge shared here applies to other Kotlin-supported platforms such as JavaScript, native and even multi-platform applications.
The Joy of Kotlin
- Author: Pierre-Yves Saumont
- Year: 2019
- Buy on Amazon: Paperback

The Joy of Kotlin teaches you to write comprehensible, easy-to-maintain, safe programs with Kotlin. In this expert guide, seasoned engineer Pierre-Yves Saumont teaches you to approach common programming challenges with a fresh, FP-inspired perspective. As you work through the many examples, you’ll dive deep into handling errors and data properly, managing state, and taking advantage of laziness. The author’s down-to-earth examples and experience-driven insights will make you a better — and more joyful — developer!
Kotlin Programming
The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Based on Big Nerd Ranch’s popular Kotlin Essentials course, this guide shows you how to work effectively with the Kotlin programming language through hands-on examples and clear explanations of key Kotlin concepts and foundational APIs. Written for Kotlin 1.2, this book will also introduce you to JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA development environment.
How to Build Android Apps with Kotlin
A hands-on guide to developing, testing, and publishing your first apps with Android
- Authors: Alex Forrester, Eran Boudjnah, Alexandru Dumbravan & Jomar Tigcal
- Year: 2021
- Buy on Amazon: Paperback | Kindle

Are you keen to get started building Android 11 apps, but don’t know where to start? How to Build Android Apps with Kotlin is a comprehensive guide that will help kick-start your Android development practice.
Kotlin Design Patterns and Best Practices
Build scalable applications using traditional, reactive, and concurrent design patterns in Kotlin

This book shows you how easy it can be to implement traditional design patterns in the modern multi-paradigm Kotlin programming language and takes you through the new patterns and paradigms that have emerged.
Java to Kotlin

It takes a week to travel the 8,000 miles overland from Java to Kotlin. If you’re an experienced Java developer who has tried the Kotlin language, you were probably productive in about the same time.
You’ll have found that they do things differently in Kotlin, though. Nullability is important, collections are different, and classes are final by default. Kotlin is more functional, but what does that mean, and how should it change the way that you program? And what about all that Java code that you still have to support?
Programming Android with Kotlin
Achieving Structured Concurrency with Coroutines
- Authors: Pierre-Olivier Laurence, Amanda Hinchman-Dominguez, Mike Dunn & G. Meike
- Year: 2022
- Buy on Amazon: Paperback | Kindle

Authors Pierre-Olivier Laurence, Amanda Hinchman-Dominguez, G. Blake Meike, and Mike Dunn explore implementations of the most common tasks in native Android development, and show you how Kotlin can help you solve concurrency problems. With a focus on structured concurrency, a new asynchronous programming paradigm, this book will guide you through one of Kotlin’s most powerful constructs, coroutines.

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