Static imports can be bad for code readability. For example, I've had a misfortune to deal with a code base with these collection "literals" all over it:

of(a, b, c)

, where

of

was a static import of

ImmutableList.of

,

ImmutableSet.of

etc. You always had to look at the imports to understand the code. Arguably that's a naming/misunderstood intention problem though, Google Collections' team obviously intended

*.of

not to be statically imported.

So the Kotlin convention to use top level functions avoids even that pitfall.

Yup 🙂 Although I have no doubt, that people calling using

of(1,2,3)

in Java will happily commit the same atrocity in Kotlin

😄