I'd like to know when the currently experimental f...

# kotlin-roadmap

[mikehearn]

I'd like to know when the currently experimental features will be promoted to stable. It feels like this should be a relatively soon thing by the nature of 'experimental', yet there's no mention of this on the roadmap.

[Nick]

My company literally won’t let me use anything marked with experimental or flowpreview 😞

[mikehearn]

That sucks but I understand it. API churn = $$$

[mikehearn]

Experimental the way the Java guys do it seems OK. They are serious about taking things out of preview/incubator.

[mikehearn]

So features stay as preview for 6-12 months or so, but only if they genuinely get feedback that there are problems or realise they didn't get it right first time. Not just waiting around. And then they promote to stable.

[elizarov]

Please, be more specific in what features you are most interested. It really depends on community interest in this or that particular feature.

[Nick]

I’d love love love it if callbackFlow became stable. Thanks for listening 👍

[mikehearn]

Contracts, for example. But more generally I think there’s an issue with using “experimental” to mean “gauging interest”

[mikehearn]

It’s a circular problem: why would I use an API in my app, if experimental doesn’t mean “you may need to make some minor tweaks to your code as the API evolves” but rather “this API may be abandoned or removed entirely in future”? The risk level is way higher.

[mikehearn]

With the former, I might decide that a bit of porting work is worth the ability to use a new capability early. But in the latter, the risk is I might have to totally rewrite that part of the code, or even re-architect the app itself in an extreme case, because not enough people followed me and used a feature. And that in turn becomes a sef-fulfilling prophecy: people will be afraid to use it in case it’s yanked, and that will make it seem like there’s no interest, so it’s more likely to be yanked.