Kotlin Conference 2024: Main Announcements and New Language Features

KotlinConf 2024: Main Announcements and New Language Features

In mid-October 2024, the annual KotlinConf conference, organized by JetBrains, took place in Amsterdam. The event gathered thousands of developers from around the world interested in the modern programming language Kotlin. This year, the organizers focused on the stability of multiplatform development, compiler performance, and tight integration with artificial intelligence tools. We have compiled the key announcements that will be useful for both beginners and experienced professionals.

Kotlin Multiplatform — Official Release

One of the most anticipated events was the release of Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) from the beta testing stage. It is now a stable tool for creating cross-platform applications. Developers can use up to 100% shared code for business logic on Android, iOS, web, and desktop. JetBrains presented updated documentation, ready-made project templates, and improved support in IntelliJ IDEA.

K2 Compiler: A New Level of Performance

At the conference, the completion of work on the new K2 compiler was announced. It provides:

• Compilation speedup of 2–3 times compared to the previous version;
• Improved support for lambda expressions and inline functions;
• More accurate error messages and hints in the IDE.

K2 is already available for testing in Kotlin 2.1. The full transition to the new compiler is planned for early 2025.

Coroutines: New Capabilities for Asynchronous Code

Developers introduced extensions for Kotlin coroutines that simplify working with data streams. Among the innovations:

• A new Flow type with improved error handling and task cancellation;
• Support for structured concurrency for complex scenarios;
• An experimental StructuredTaskScope function for managing child coroutines.

Integration with AI and Machine Learning

JetBrains announced Kotlin for AI — a set of libraries and tools for working with neural networks. Kotlin now supports:

• Direct invocation of TensorFlow and PyTorch models via JNI;
• Built-in functions for text tokenization and vectorization;
• Integration with language models from OpenAI and Hugging Face.

For developers in the Python ecosystem, this is an excellent opportunity to try Kotlin in data analysis and automation tasks.

Improvements for Android Developers

Google and JetBrains jointly announced full support for Kotlin in Android Studio 2024.3. Now all project templates use Kotlin by default, and automatic code conversion is available for Java developers. A new tool, Kotlin Lint, for static code analysis was also introduced, helping to avoid common errors at early stages.

Conclusion

The KotlinConf 2024 conference confirmed Kotlin's status as one of the most dynamically developing programming languages. The main announcements — stable Kotlin Multiplatform, the fast K2 compiler, and AI integration.