About collections:
Kotlin focuses on Java interop and doesn't provide its own collection classes (at least for now), only extension functions for standard collection interfaces. You can use any Java collections library you like, including the JDK.
For example, to create standard JDK collections you can say:
- listOf(1, 2, 3): List<Int>,
- arrayListOf(1, 2, 3) : MutableList<Int>,
- setOf("s", "d"), hashSetOf("s", "d"),
- mapOf("foo" to 1, "bar" to 2), hashMapOf(...)
(or constructors of concrete Java classes)