Kotlin - Property initialization using “by lazy” vs. “lateinit”

Question

In Kotlin if you don\'t want to initialize a class property inside the constructor or in the top of the class body, you have basically these two options (from the language r

Answer 1

Additionnally to hotkey's good answer, here is how I choose among the two in practice:

lateinit is for external initialisation: when you need external stuff to initialise your value by calling a method.

e.g. by calling:

private lateinit var value: MyClass

fun init(externalProperties: Any) {
   value = somethingThatDependsOn(externalProperties)
}

While lazy is when it only uses dependencies internal to your object.