Merge pull request scala#742 from scalacenter/collections-status

Add short update about collections status

blog/_posts/2017-09-12-collections-status.md

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+layout: blog-detail
+post-type: blog
+title: Status of the Collections
+by: Julien Richard-Foy
+---
+
+This post gives a short update about the
+[new collections](https://github.com/scala/collection-strawman/) status.
+
+We have published a
+[0.4.0](https://index.scala-lang.org/scala/collection-strawman/collection-strawman/0.4.0?target=_2.13.0-M2)
+release a few days ago, which:
+
+- gets closer to feature parity with the standard collections, with the addition
+  of the `TrieMap` collection type as well as several operations (`withFilter`, `distinct`,
+  `patch`, `:++`, to name a few);
+- comes with a
+  [migration tool](https://github.com/scala/collection-strawman#migrating-from-the-standard-collections-to-the-strawman)
+  to adapt existing code bases from the standard collections to the strawman;
+- benefits from internal improvements (optimizations, bug fixes, test coverage).
+
+Most of these changes have been contributed by external developers, which I am very
+grateful to: @EPronovost, @marcelocenerine, @nicolasstucki, @odd, @olafurpg, @smarter
+@xavier-fernandez.
+
+## Next Steps
+
+Stefan Zeiger is currently working on replacing the current collections of the
+standard library with the strawman and then making the compiler use it.
+
+Rex Kerr is working on increasing the tests coverage by introducing property-based
+tests based on [collections-laws](https://github.com/scala/scala-collections-laws).
+
+As you can see in the list of issues planned for the
+[next release](https://github.com/scala/collection-strawman/milestone/4),
+we continue to implement missing collection types (e.g. `LinkedHashMap`)
+and operations but we also start introducing new operations (such as `intersperse`
+or `lazyFoldRight`). I’m going to write more developer documentation to explain
+the internals of the new design, so that, in case you want to suggest adding something that
+you feel is missing, it will be easier to contribute!
+