I’ve found that Kotlin has changed that, at least for me. I enjoy playing with it even for small projects, something I’ve really never done with Java.

Seconded here, Java/Scala and maybe a bit of Kotlin are used for client projects but personal and play projects I almost always do in Kotlin.

I will wax poetic about Kotlin to any programmer that will listen. To me, it feels like a language created by seasoned Java developers who were tired of the tedious parts of writing Java.

Plenty of us, how do expect Java open source projects get born?

Or Android apps for that matter.