Russell started his first Kotlin Multiplatform project the day after it was possible to share code between JVM and Kotlin/Native. He is the author and maintainer of Multiplatform Settings, a key-value storage library which was one of the earliest mobile multiplatform libraries available. He loves finding new ways to connect with this community and help people and organizations use this technology.
Russell Wolf
Kotlin Multiplatform at Touchlab
Kotlin Multiplatform: From “Hello World” to the Real World
By now you’ve surely heard of Kotlin Multiplatform, and maybe tried it out in a demo. Maybe you’ve even integrated some shared code into a production app. If you have, you know that there are many subtle complications that come up when you want to ship shared Kotlin code. This includes things like modularization, translating between Kotlin and Swift, managing multiple repositories that depend on each other, and optimizing build times and binary sizes. It’s not as easy as it looks when you write your first “Hello World”!
At Touchlab, we’ve been involved with Kotlin Multiplatform since the very beginning, and we’ve learned a thing or two along the way about what does and doesn’t work well. Come hear about how we’ve solved some of these difficulties to ship Multiplatform code across all sorts of organizations and environments, so you’re ready to use KMP in the real world.
Talk Title
When sharing isn’t caring: Using platform-specific code in Kotlin Multiplatform
Sharing code across platforms is a wonderful superpower. But sometimes, sharing 100% of your codebase isn’t the goal. Maybe you’re migrating existing apps to multiplatform, maybe you have platform-specific libraries or APIs you want to interact with, or maybe your platforms need to do slightly different things.
The strength of Kotlin on every platform is not just sharing code, but also interop with the platform’s unique APIs. When building multiplatform apps, it pays to think not only about what code can be shared, but also about what code is better not shared, and how to move between them.
Using examples drawn from real-world projects, we’ll look at different strategies for architecting the shared and not-shared parts of your codebase, so you’re better prepared to handle those times when a platform-specific solution is the best one.