Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, 2nd Edition

Inspecting Kotlin Bytecode

You learned in Chapter 1 that Kotlin can be used to write programs that run on the JVM, where Java bytecode is executed. When targeting the JVM, it is often useful to inspect the Java bytecode that the Kotlin compiler generates to run on the JVM. You will look at the bytecode in several places in this book as a way to analyze how a particular language feature works on the JVM.

Knowing how to inspect the Java equivalent of the Kotlin code you write is a great technique for understanding how Kotlin works, especially if you have Java experience. If you do not have Java experience specifically, the Java code will likely share familiar traits with a language that you have worked with – so think of it as a pseudocode ...