Since, Kotlin doesn’t have static member for class, it’s mean that you can’t create static method and static variable in Kotlin class. In most cases, it’s recommended to simply use package-level functions instead. In Kotlin, unlike Java or C#, classes do not have static methods. Most of the programming language have concepts where classes can have static members - fields this means that only one instance of that static member is created which is shared across all instances of the class without an instance of their containing class. I don't know why this design wasn't chosen in Java (given its close to relation to Smalltalk), but it may have something to do with simplifying the type system (note that most languages with classes-as-objects tend to be dynamic languages).Kotlin - Static Member-Fields and Singletons In that case, 'class methods' are actually just normal instance methods of the class's metaclass. In Ruby, classes are instances of the Class class (and yes, that means that Class is an instance of itself).

in Smalltalk classes are instances of a parallel hierarchy of metaclasses. Classes aren't objects, but objects are objects (duh!), so the question should rather be: why would a language not use companion objects?Īnother aspect is simplicity: why have two things, objects with instance members and classes with static members when you can just have objects with instance members?Īn alternative that is used in many Smalltalk-derived languages, is to make classes themselves objects. In an object-oriented language, something not being an object is an extremely crippling restriction.

Static kotlin