50 Senior Java Developer Interview Questions (ANSWERED) To Know

Spring is an open source development framework for enterprise Java. The core features of the Spring Framework can be used in developing any Java application, but there are extensions for building web applications on top of the Java EE platform. Spring framework targets to make J2EE development easier to use and promote good programming practice by enabling a POJO-based (Plain Old Java Object) programming model.

A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a process virtual machine that can execute Java bytecode. Each Java source file is compiled into a bytecode file, which is executed by the JVM. Java was designed to allow application programs to be built that could be run on any platform, without having to be rewritten or recompiled by the programmer for each separate platform. A Java virtual machine makes this possible, because it is aware of the specific instruction lengths and other particularities of the underlying hardware platform.

• The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is basically the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) where your Java programs are being executed. It also includes browser plugins for applet execution.

• The Java Development Kit (JDK) is the full featured Software Development Kit for Java, including the JRE, the compilers and tools (like JavaDoc, and Java Debugger), in order for a user to develop, compile and execute Java applications.

The objects that form the backbone of your application and that are managed by the Spring IoC container are called beans. A bean is an object that is instantiated, assembled, and otherwise managed by a Spring IoC container. These beans are created with the configuration metadata that you supply to the container, for example, in the form of XML <bean/> definitions.

Following is the list of few of the great benefits of using Spring Framework:

• Lightweight − Spring is lightweight when it comes to size and transparency. The basic version of spring framework is around 2MB.
• Inversion of control (IOC) − Loose coupling is achieved in spring using the technique Inversion of Control. The objects give their dependencies instead of creating or looking for dependent objects.
• Aspect oriented (AOP) − Spring supports Aspect oriented programming and enables cohesive development by separating application business logic from system services.
• Container − Spring contains and manages the life cycle and configuration of application objects.
• MVC Framework − Spring's web framework is a well-designed web MVC framework, which provides a great alternative to web frameworks such as Struts or other over-engineered or less popular web frameworks.
• Transaction Management − Spring provides a consistent transaction management interface that can scale down to a local transaction (using a single database, for example) and scale up to global transactions (using JTA, for example).
• Exception Handling − Spring provides a convenient API to translate technology-specific exceptions (thrown by JDBC, Hibernate, or JDO, for example) into consistent, unchecked exceptions.

These methods can be used as a hint to the JVM, in order to start a garbage collection. However, this it is up to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to start the garbage collection immediately or later in time.

On the surface, an application context is the same as a bean factory. Both load bean definitions, wire beans together, and dispense beans upon request. But it also provides:

• A means for resolving text messages, including support for internationalization
• A generic way to load file resources
• Events to beans that are registered as listeners

JDBC is an abstraction layer that allows users to choose between databases. JDBC enables developers to write database applications in Java, without having to concern themselves with the underlying details of a particular database.

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);

CI server function is to continuously integrate all changes being made and committed to repository by different developers and check for compile errors. It needs to build code several times a day, preferably after every commit so it can detect which commit made the breakage if the breakage happens.

A class acts as a blue-print that defines the properties, states, and behaviors that are common to a number of objects. An object is an instance of the class. For example, you have a class called Vehicle and Car is the object of that class. You can create any number of objects for the class named Vehicle, such as Van, Truck, and Auto.

The new operator is used to create an object of a class. When an object of a class is instantiated, the system allocates memory for every data member that is present in the class.

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

• sleep() is a blocking operation that keeps a hold on the monitor / lock of the shared object for the specified number of milliseconds.

• wait(), on the other hand, simply pauses the thread until either (a) the specified number of milliseconds have elapsed or (b) it receives a desired notification from another thread (whichever is first), without keeping a hold on the monitor/lock of the shared object.

sleep() is most commonly used for polling, or to check for certain results, at a regular interval. wait() is generally used in multithreaded applications, in conjunction with notify() / notifyAll(), to achieve synchronization and avoid race conditions.

The default scope of Spring bean is singleton, so there will be only one instance per context. That means that all the having a class level variable that any thread can update will lead to inconsistent data. Hence in default mode spring beans are not thread-safe.

However, we can change spring bean scope to request, prototype or session to achieve thread-safety at the cost of performance. It’s a design decision and based on the project requirements.

A nice way to do this is using Apache commons IOUtils to copy the InputStream into a StringWriter like:

tringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
IOUtils.copy(inputStream, writer, encoding);
String theString = writer.toString();

or

// NB: does not close inputStream, you'll have to use try-with-resources for that
String theString = IOUtils.toString(inputStream, encoding); 

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

An interface is a template that contains only the signature of methods. The signature of a method consists of the numbers of parameters, the type of parameter (value, reference, or output), and the order of parameters. An interface has no implementation on its own because it contains only the definition of methods without any method body. An interface is defined using the interface keyword. Moreover, you cannot instantiate an interface. The various features of an interface are as follows:

• An interface is used to implement multiple inheritance in code. This feature of an interface is quite different from that of abstract classes because a class cannot derive the features of more than one class but can easily implement multiple interfaces.
• It defines a specific set of methods and their arguments.
• Variables in interface must be declared as public, static, and final while methods must be public and abstract.
• A class implementing an interface must implement all of its methods.
• An interface can derive from more than one interface.

• Developers practicing continuous integration merge their changes back to the main branch as often as possible. By doing so, you avoid the integration hell that usually happens when people wait for release day to merge their changes into the release branch.
• Continuous delivery is an extension of continuous integration to make sure that you can release new changes to your customers quickly in a sustainable way. This means that on top of having automated your testing, you also have automated your release process and you can deploy your application at any point of time by clicking on a button.
• Continuous deployment goes one step further than continuous delivery. With this practice, every change that passes all stages of your production pipeline is released to your customers. There's no human intervention, and only a failed test will prevent a new change to be deployed to production.

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]
    }
}

Controllers provide access to the application behavior that you typically define through a service interface. Controllers interpret user input and transform it into a model that is represented to the user by the view. Spring implements a controller in a very abstract way, which enables you to create a wide variety of controllers.

The Spring IoC creates the objects, wire them together, configure them, and manage their complete lifecycle from creation till destruction. The Spring container uses dependency injection (DI) to manage the components that make up an application.

There are two types of IoC containers in Spring:

• Bean Factory container − This is the simplest container providing basic support for DI .The BeanFactory is usually preferred where the resources are limited like mobile devices or applet based applications
• Spring ApplicationContext Container − This container adds more enterprise-specific functionality such as the ability to resolve textual messages from a properties file and the ability to publish application events to interested event listeners.

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.

volatile has semantics for memory visibility. Basically, the value of a volatile field becomes visible to all readers (other threads in particular) after a write operation completes on it. Without volatile, readers could see some non-updated value.

There are only three thread-safe methods:

• repaint,
• revalidate,
• invalidate.