Any thoughts, best practices around objects vs. to...

# server

[Asaf Peleg]

Any thoughts, best practices around objects vs. top level function declarations for related but independent functions? I'm assuming there's some overhead in creating a static object but is it negligible? The benefit feels like slightly better development experience being able to have auto complete when using the functions.

[jessel]

I don’t imagine there’s any meaningful performance difference between the two - top level variables and functions within Kotlin essentially get compiled into an invisible object, since the JVM itself doesn’t really support top level anything but classes

[ephemient]

Kotlin object compiles to a class with a singleton object instance whereas top-levels compile to static fields and methods, so it's not quite the same

[ephemient]

there should be no noticeable performance difference though

[ephemient]

technically Java sort of allows top-levels now: https://openjdk.org/jeps/445 (not in a way that's useful for Kotlin though)

[Asaf Peleg]

thanks for chiming in

[Asaf Peleg]

Aggregate internet answer seems to be "it's up to you" since it doesn't affect performance much.

Opinions seems to come down to style/preference.

Pro Object:
• Namespacing, easier to control pollution for auto-completion.
Pro Top Level:
• Slightly better performance
• Kotlin may add namespacing in future

[ephemient]

in general, I lean towards top-level functions. the package name itself is already a namespace, and that's what stdlib does too

[ephemient]

(with the exception of https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin.properties/-delegates/ and https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin.text/-charsets/, to be fair)

[ephemient]

oh and https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin.text/-typography/. but IMO Charsets and Typography are a bit different since they're holding constants

[Asaf Peleg]

I think those exceptions illustrate that there's potentially a use case for both