The Best Ever KBUG Of 2023!

BKUG was in hibernation during 2023. But, thanks to the very generous sponsorship of Workrise, we are able to fit in one event before the year ends. We have two great talks for you, plus the usual nibbles and chat.

We will be meeting just after the webinars in November, which will provide more depth on the recent announcements about Kotlin, Kotlin Multiplatform, Compose Multiplatform and Fleet.

Garth will be summarising all that's new and great in these announcements, whilst Richard and Paul will be reminding us what makes the core language wonderful. We will also be discussing what kinds of event the local community wants in 2024. Hope to see you there!

Kotlin for Multiplatform Development
(Garth Gilmour)

Kotlin has been a multiplatform language for several years, providing multiple compilers that target runtimes other than the JVM. But in 2023 there have been a barrage of new announcements, which greatly expanded the scope and applicability of multiplatform projects.

The new Fleet IDE provides cross-language navigation, refactoring, and debugging support for projects that mix Kotlin and Swift. The K2 compiler unifies earlier products, and provides a foundation for language updates. An online generator allows anyone to create new projects. Compose Multiplatform, the UI library built on Jetpack Compose, is now available on iOS as well as Android and desktop. Experimental support is available for WebAssembly. Finally the ecosystem of multiplatform libraries has expanded enormously, now supporting coroutines, serialization, date handling, logging, testing, networking, dependency injection, caching and database access.

In this talk we will introduce all the above, discuss the merits of multiplatform development in general, and explore the different options available for mixing cross-platform and native functionality.

Tips and features to elevate everyday Kotlin coding
(Richard Gibson and Paul McCartney)

Kotlin is renowned for its concise syntax and type safety and has become a go-to language for developers. However, there's a wealth of hidden treasures and upcoming enhancements that can supercharge your Kotlin code even further. In this talk, we'll dive into the better, lesser-known, and upcoming language features that will supercharge your Kotlin code. From concise syntax to powerful type safety mechanisms, we'll explore the nuances that make Kotlin a standout language for modern development.