42 Advanced Java Interview Questions For Senior Developers

It doesn’t! Garbage Collection simply cleans up unused memory when an object goes out of scope and is no longer needed. However an application could create a huge number of large objects that causes an OutOfMemoryError.

There are several differences between HashMap and Hashtable in Java:

1. Hashtable is synchronized, whereas HashMap is not. This makes HashMap better for non-threaded applications, as unsynchronized Objects typically perform better than synchronized ones.

2. Hashtable does not allow null keys or values. HashMap allows one null key and any number of null values.

3. One of HashMap's subclasses is LinkedHashMap, so in the event that you'd want predictable iteration order (which is insertion order by default), you could easily swap out the HashMap for a LinkedHashMap. This wouldn't be as easy if you were using Hashtable.

• Method overloading in Java occurs when two or more methods in the same class have the exact same name, but different parameters.

class Dog{
    public void bark(){
        System.out.println("woof ");
    }
 
    //overloading method
    public void bark(int num){
    	for(int i=0; i<num; i++)
    		System.out.println("woof ");
    }
}

• On the other hand, method overriding is defined as the case when a child class redefines the same method as a parent class. Overridden methods must have the same name, argument list, and return type. The overriding method may not limit the access of the method it overrides.

class Dog{
    public void bark(){
        System.out.println("woof ");
    }
}
class Hound extends Dog{
    public void sniff(){
        System.out.println("sniff ");
    }
 
    public void bark(){
        System.out.println("bowl");
    }
}
 
public class OverridingTest{
    public static void main(String [] args){
        Dog dog = new Hound();
        dog.bark();
    }
}

The name reflection is used to describe code which is able to inspect other code in the same system (or itself) and to make modifications at runtime.

For example, say you have an object of an unknown type in Java, and you would like to call a 'doSomething' method on it if one exists. Java's static typing system isn't really designed to support this unless the object conforms to a known interface, but using reflection, your code can look at the object and find out if it has a method called 'doSomething' and then call it if you want to.

Method method = foo.getClass().getMethod("doSomething", null);
method.invoke(foo, null);

• An Error "indicates serious problems that a reasonable application should not try to catch."
• An Exception "indicates conditions that a reasonable application might want to catch."

Java provides and supports the creation both of abstract classes and interfaces. Both implementations share some common characteristics, but they differ in the following features:

• All methods in an interface are implicitly abstract. On the other hand, an abstract class may contain both abstract and non-abstract methods.
• A class may implement a number of Interfaces, but can extend only one abstract class.
• In order for a class to implement an interface, it must implement all its declared methods. However, a class may not implement all declared methods of an abstract class. Though, in this case, the sub-class must also be declared as abstract.
• Abstract classes can implement interfaces without even providing the implementation of interface methods.
• Variables declared in a Java interface is by default final. An abstract class may contain non-final variables.
• Members of a Java interface are public by default. A member of an abstract class can either be private, protected or public.
• An interface is absolutely abstract and cannot be instantiated. An abstract class also cannot be instantiated, but can be invoked if it contains a main method.

Yes: enums have tight instance controls that allows you to use == to compare instances. Here's the guarantee provided by the language specification.

It is not possible to do something like you want in Java. Different Java applications will use different JVM's fully separating themselves into different 'blackbox'es. However, you have 2 options:

• Use sockets (or channels). Basically one application will open the listening socket and start waiting until it receives some signal. The other application will connect there, and send signals when it had completed something. I'd say this is a preferred way used in 99.9% of applications.
• You can call winapi from Java (on windows).

Java is always pass-by-value. Unfortunately, when we pass the value of an object, we are passing the reference to it. There is no such thing as "pass-by-reference" in Java. This is confusing to beginners.

The key to understanding this is that something like

Dog myDog;

is not a Dog; it's actually a pointer to a Dog.

So when you have

Dog myDog = new Dog("Rover");
foo(myDog);

you're essentially passing the address of the created Dog object to the foo method.

Java has no way of making a top-level class static but you can simulate a static class like this:

• Declare your class final - Prevents extension of the class since extending a static class makes no sense
• Make the constructor private - Prevents instantiation by client code as it makes no sense to instantiate a static class
• Make all the members and functions of the class static - Since the class cannot be instantiated no instance methods can be called or instance fields accessed
• Note that the compiler will not prevent you from declaring an instance (non-static) member. The issue will only show up if you attempt to call the instance member

As a reminder, it needs to be said that generally, == is NOT a viable alternative to equals. When it is, however (such as with enum), there are two important differences to consider:

1. == never throws NullPointerException

enum Color { BLACK, WHITE };

Color nothing = null;
if (nothing == Color.BLACK);      // runs fine
if (nothing.equals(Color.BLACK)); // throws NullPointerEx

2. == is subject to type compatibility check at compile time

enum Color { BLACK, WHITE };
enum Chiral { LEFT, RIGHT };

if (Color.BLACK.equals(Chiral.LEFT)); // compiles fine
if (Color.BLACK == Chiral.LEFT);      // DOESN'T COMPILE!!! Incompatible types!

That feature is called varargs, and it's a feature introduced in Java 5. It means that function can receive multiple String arguments:

myMethod("foo", "bar");
myMethod("foo", "bar", "baz");
myMethod(new String[]{"foo", "var", "baz"}); // you can eve

Then, you can use the String var as an array:

public void myMethod(String... strings){
    for(String whatever : strings){
        // do what ever you want
    }

    // the code above is is equivalent to
    for( int i = 0; i < strings.length; i++){
        // classical for. In this case you use strings[i]
    }
}

The static initializer is a static {} block of code inside java class, and run only one time before the constructor or main method is called. If you had to perform a complicated calculation to determine the value of x — or if its value comes from a database — a static initializer could be very useful.

Consider:

class StaticInit {
    public static int x;
    static {
        x = 32;
    }
    // other class members such as constructors and
    // methods go here...
}

Basically, a "Bean" follows the standart:

• is a serializable object (that is, it implements java.io.Serializable, and does so correctly), that
• has "properties" whose getters and setters are just methods with certain names (like, say, getFoo() is the getter for the "Foo" property), and
• has a public 0-arg constructor (so it can be created at will and configured by setting its properties).

There is no syntactic difference between a JavaBean and another class - a class is a JavaBean if it follows the standards.

The Iterator's fail-safe property works with the clone of the underlying collection and thus, it is not affected by any modification in the collection. All the collection classes in java.util package are fail-fast, while the collection classes in java.util.concurrent are fail-safe. Fail-fast iterators throw a ConcurrentModificationException, while fail-safe iterator never throws such an exception.

The JVM has a heap that is the runtime data area from which memory for all class instances and arrays is allocated. It is created at the JVM start-up. Heap memory for objects is reclaimed by an automatic memory management system which is known as a garbage collector. Heap memory consists of live and dead objects. Live objects are accessible by the application and will not be a subject of garbage collection. Dead objects are those which will never be accessible by the application, but have not been collected by the garbage collector yet. Such objects occupy the heap memory space until they are eventually collected by the garbage collector.

The JIT is the JVM’s mechanism by which it can optimize code at runtime.

JIT means Just In Time. It is a central feature of any JVM. Among other optimizations, it can perform code inlining, lock coarsening or lock eliding, escape analysis etc.

The main benefit of the JIT is on the programmer’s side: code should be written so that it just works; if the code can be optimized at runtime, more often than not, the JIT will find a way.

The throw keyword is used to explicitly raise a exception within the program. On the contrary, the throws clause is used to indicate those exceptions that are not handled by a method. Each method must explicitly specify which exceptions does not handle, so the callers of that method can guard against possible exceptions. Finally, multiple exceptions are separated by a comma.

• StringBuffer is synchronized, StringBuilder is not. When some thing is synchronized, then multiple threads can access, and modify it with out any problem or side effect. StringBuffer is synchronized, so you can use it with multiple threads with out any problem.

• StringBuilder is faster than StringBuffer because it's not synchronized. Using synchronized methods in a single thread is overkill.

The major advantage of an ordered array is that the search times have time complexity of O(log n), compared to that of an unordered array, which is O (n). The disadvantage of an ordered array is that the insertion operation has a time complexity of O(n), because the elements with higher values must be moved to make room for the new element. Instead, the insertion operation for an unordered array takes constant time of O(1).

The transient keyword in Java is used to indicate that a field should not be part of the serialization.

By default, all of object's variables get converted into a persistent state. In some cases, you may want to avoid persisting some variables because you don't have the need to persist those variables. So you can declare those variables as transient. If the variable is declared as transient, then it will not be persisted.