“Kotlin 1.4” Released, improved IDE

August 17, the developer team of “Kotlin”, an object-oriented programming language developed by JetBrains, released the latest release “Kotlin 1.4”. It adds improvements to IDE, compiler, and more,

Kotlin is a programming language that targets Java Virtual Machine and Android. It is a statically typed and interoperable with Java. It can build with any Java IDE like IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, and Eclipse, or the command line. Kotlin 1.4 is the latest release after v1.3, released in October.

Before this release, SAM (Single Abstract Method) conversion could only be used with Java methods and interfaces, but now SAM conversion can be used with Kotlin interfaces.

This release introduces a coroutine debugger for coroutine, officially released in version 1.3. It makes it easy to use coroutine, for example, when specifying bugs in concurrent applications. It also introduces the new Kotlin Project Wizard, which makes it easy to get started with projects with complex structures.

Enhancements are added to IDE performance, as Kotlin has improved the time it takes for autocomplete suggestions to appear, and the code highlighting has been sped up.

This release introduces a new compiler and more powerful type inference algorithm, which is enabled by default. It infers types automatically in more use-cases and supports smart casts even in complicated scenarios.

There are three back-ends (Kotlin/JVM, Kotlin/JS, and Kotlin/Native), and the developers are now working to migrate Kotlin/JVM and Kotlin/JS to the same IR. As a result, there will be more logic shared by those three backends. They are also working to unify pipeline, and these functionalities are offered in this release as an alpha.

This release includes many other improvements.

Kotlin
https://kotlinlang.org/