Greetings, budding developers! Today, we're going to dive into the world of data structures, focusing on how to handle queries efficiently using Kotlin. This is a common challenge encountered in various data science and algorithmic scenarios. Let's uncover the intricacies of managing sorted data collections in Kotlin and engage in some interactive problem-solving!

Before jumping into the task, let's understand how Kotlin handles sorted data structures. While Kotlin doesn't have a direct equivalent to Java's TreeSet, it offers the SortedSet interface and various collection operations that help maintain a sorted order without duplicates.

Advantages of using sorted collections include:

1. Extracting the minimum or maximum values from a sorted structure often comes with logarithmic or linear time complexity, depending on the specific implementation or method used.
2. Maintaining a sorted order with each insertion or deletion can be achieved through various collection operations, typically offering time complexities like $O(\log N)$ or better with a priority queue.

Understanding these operations enables us to efficiently utilize Kotlin's collections to solve our problem.

We are tasked with designing a Kotlin function named processQueries that efficiently processes a series of distinct requests or queries. Each query is a pair of two integers — the type of operation and the operand.

The function should handle the following operations:

• Adding an integer to the collection (operation type 0)
• Removing an integer (operation type 1). We can ensure that the integer exists in the collection when this operation is invoked.
• Finding the smallest integer that is greater than or equal to a specified value (operation type 2).

The function should return the current size of the collection for operations of type 0 or 1, and the smallest possible integer for operation type 2. If such an integer does not exist, the function should return -1.

Here’s the list of queries in Kotlin:

The function should return: [1, 10, 2, 1, 20]

To begin, we initialize a mutable sortedSetOf, which maintains a sorted order. We also create a mutable list results to store outputs for each request.

We utilize a for loop to iterate through all queries. Using a when expression, we process each operation. For operation types 0 and 1, we either add or remove the specified value from the set, then append the current size to results.

For operation type 2, we find the smallest integer greater than or equal to the given value. In Kotlin, this can be performed using higher in a SortedSet equivalent. If no appropriate value is found, we add -1 to results.

Congratulations! You've proficiently navigated the complexities of sorted collections in Kotlin and developed an understanding of handling various query types efficiently. This required using Kotlin's collection operations, control structures like when, and maintaining collections' ordered characteristics.

You're now well-equipped to tackle similar challenges using Kotlin on your own. Be sure to revisit this lesson as needed, and remember: practice and application are key. Happy coding!