[Channels] Hi, everyone. Are channels stable? I'm ...

# coroutines

[Marko Kovacevic]

[Channels] Hi, everyone. Are channels stable? I'm getting experimental errors in InteliJ with latest coroutines dependency

implementation("org.jetbrains.kotlinx:kotlinx-coroutines-core:1.4.0-M1")

[louiscad]

`Channel`s are stable, produce is not, as simple as this, and the IDE tells it to you.

[Marko Kovacevic]

Thanks, wasn't sure. Strange that they present experimental stuff in their official documentation for Kotlin, expected stable only to be there.

[louiscad]

How do you think experimental stuff graduates to stable?

[louiscad]

My answer is: By getting people to try it and gather feedback.

[Marko Kovacevic]

True, but there's usually an experimental section separated from the stable section, no?

[louiscad]

BTW, experimental doesn't mean unsuable. In kotlinx libraries, it mostly means the API surface could change, it rarely means it's broken. In fact, I don't recall any time where something experimental was broken in any way in the kotlinx libraries (the story is different for #multiplatform).

[louiscad]

True, but there's usually an experimental section separated from the stable section, no?

Well, there's already the warnings in the IDE.

[Marko Kovacevic]

Guess this way it's faster to "experiment" with latest features. Great to hear that experimental features are quite stable. Thanks for explaining this.

[gildor]

experimental is not about “runtime stability”, it’s about API stability (and backward compatibility)

[Marko Kovacevic]

@gildor your info was what I was looking for, but I didn’t express properly. Thanks