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What are coroutines in Kotlin and how to write them

Blog post from Tabnine

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Tabnine Team
Word Count
1,348
Language
English
Hacker News Points
-
Summary

Kotlin, developed by JetBrains, is an open-source, statically typed programming language that has become the preferred choice for Android development, surpassing Java, largely due to its modern features like coroutines. Coroutines, a concurrency pattern allowing multiple processes to run simultaneously, are implemented in Kotlin to enable asynchronous and non-blocking code execution, making them more memory-efficient compared to traditional threads. This feature is crucial for running background tasks without stalling the main application thread, thus enhancing performance. Coroutines in Kotlin can be written using constructs such as `suspend`, `withContext`, and `launch`, each offering different ways to handle execution threads and manage resources effectively. Proper management, including cancellation of coroutines, is emphasized to prevent resource wastage, similar to practices in RxJava. Although the concept of coroutines is not new, its integration into Kotlin provides developers with a powerful tool to write more efficient and scalable code.