You’re Spawning Too Many Coroutines (And Your App Is Paying the Price)

Overusing `viewModelScope.launch {}` in Android development causes subtle but serious bugs — not memory leaks, but deferred execution, lost return values, weakened exception handling, and race conditions. Five common anti-patterns are covered: wrapping synchronous code in a coroutine, routing TextFieldValue updates through launch (causing dropped characters and cursor jumps), using async/await sequentially instead of concurrently, redundant withContext(Dispatchers.Main) inside viewModelScope, and eager flow collection in init{} instead of using stateIn. Each pattern includes a concrete fix and a clear explanation of why the original breaks. The core rule: if no suspend functions are called and no dispatcher switch is needed, skip the coroutine entirely.