The Changing Grain of Kotlin

In this talk, Nat Pryce and Duncan McGregor, authors of "Java to Kotlin: A Refactoring Guidebook," explore the concept of a programming language's "grain" – how its features interact and evolve over time, much like wood. They trace the evolution of Kotlin's grain from its initial release, demonstrating how their own coding styles became outdated and how they modernized them. The presentation covers how new language features, interactions between them, and community feedback shape the language's grain, influencing development practices and the quality of resulting systems. Key topics discussed include null safety, extension functions, error handling, coroutines, contracts, and context receivers, all in the context of how these features impact the developer experience and the overall design decisions made when working with Kotlin.