Borrowing from Kotlin

Not all projects can be easily migrated to Kotlin, but that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from Kotlin within other languages.

One of the things we can borrow from Kotlin in Java/Android is its clever naming scheme for constructing/converting objects. Kotlin comes with various methods such as mutableListOf():

val list = mutableListOf(1, 2, 3)

This allows Kotlin to define new static mapping/construction methods in a consistent manner. Kotlin follows a naming scheme where YourClass becomes a static method yourClassOf(...).

The benefit of using this in Java lies within your development environment. Once you type yourClassOf, you can summon up all implementations that create an instance of YourClass. In Android Studio or IntelliJ, you just press F1:

So why not apply the same idiom to Java?