Kotlin in Action: Release Schedule

[Pete Letkeman]

It appears as though Kotlin has an accelerated release schedule when compared to Java with 1.1.5 released a few weeks ago and 1.2 currently in the works.
How did the speed of Kotlin releases affect the material in your book or your book?

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Pete Letkeman wrote:It appears as though Kotlin has an accelerated release schedule when compared to Java with 1.1.5 released a few weeks ago and 1.2 currently in the works.
How did the speed of Kotlin releases affect the material in your book or your book?

In the About the Book section it states:

The book covers Kotlin 1.0. Kotlin 1.1 has been in development in parallel to the writing of the book, and whenever possible, we’ve mentioned the changes made in 1.1. But because the new version is still a work in progress as of this writing, we haven’t been able to provide complete coverage. For ongoing updates about the new features and changes, please refer to the online documentation at https://kotlinlang.org.

So I guess there might be some gap, the authors can explain better.

[Pete Letkeman]

The book covers Kotlin 1.0. Kotlin 1.1 has been in development in parallel to the writing of the book, and whenever possible, we’ve mentioned the changes made in 1.1. But because the new version is still a work in progress as of this writing, we haven’t been able to provide complete coverage. For ongoing updates about the new features and changes, please refer to the online documentation at https://kotlinlang.org.

Thank you, sorry I did not see that.

[Dmitry Jemerov]

Indeed, the book covers Kotlin 1.0. The main new feature in Kotlin 1.1 is coroutines, and while we could have attempted to cover them in the book, we simply didn't have the feeling that there was enough real-world experience with coroutines, and that we could teach how to use them properly (rather than simply explain that they exist and how they work internally).

Other than coroutines, a lot of work in 1.1 and 1.2 is either internal compiler work or minor language changes, so the impact of those changes on the material of the book is quite small. I would say that, other than the coroutines, the book still provides fully adequate coverage of the current state of the Kotlin language.

[Pete Letkeman]

This is great to hear and I'm looking forward to increasing my Kotlin knowledge base.