Kotlin: An Exploration of Sealed Classes
Article Summary
James Shephard from BBC explores how Kotlin's sealed classes can fundamentally reshape your Android architecture. What if callbacks aren't the answer to async operations?
A BBC engineer dives deep into Kotlin sealed classes, comparing them to Java's traditional approaches for handling different data types and async operations. The article challenges common patterns like receiver callbacks and explores how a simple language feature can trigger architectural rethinking.
Key Takeaways
- Sealed classes provide compile time safety for handling different data types
- Smart casting eliminates explicit casts and complicated contracts with calling code
- Separates async concerns from result handling using standard concurrency frameworks
- Blocking interfaces adapt easier to non blocking than callbacks adapt to blocking
- Similar to Swift enums with associated values for type safe state
Critical Insight
Sealed classes combined with when() syntax offer a cleaner, safer alternative to callbacks by decoupling thread marshalling from result handling at compile time.
