ArrayList<String>() vs arrayListOf<String>()

arrayListOf<T>() is mainly there for your convenience. vararg-functions usually come with a (sometimes negligible) performance impact and switching between the arrayListOf(someElements...) and arrayListOf() without that convenience method would basically delegate that problem to you as a programmer. You have to know it and you would have to change that code to ArrayList(), if such an impact is affecting you and if that convenience function wouldn't exist.

arrayListOf() is basically just that. It returns ArrayList() and it is inlined. That's just convenient, so that you don't really have to think about it, when you switch back and forth between arrayListOf(someElements) and arrayListOf().

That having said: there is no difference between arrayListOf() and ArrayList() as also others have already mentioned and arrayListOf(elements) is the convenience variant to construct an ArrayList with the given elements.

arrayListOf is a function, that has optional variable length arguments

In case of using it without arguments, there is no difference