Difference between transient and volatile keyword in Java? example

Surprisingly "Difference between transient and volatile keyword in Java" has asked many times on various java interviews. volatile and transient are two completely different keywords from different areas of Java programming language. the transient keyword is used during serialization of Java object while volatile is related to the visibility of variables modified by multiple threads during concurrent programming. The only similarity between volatile and transient is that they are less used or uncommon keywords and not as popular as public, static, or final.

Why wait, notify, and notifyAll methods are called from synchronized block or method in Java?

Most of the Java developers know that wait(), notify(), and notifyAll() methods of object class must have to be called inside synchronized method or synchronized block in Java but how many times we thought why? Recently this question was asked to in Java interview to one of my friend, he pondered for a moment and replied that if we don't call wait() or notify() method from synchronized context we will receive IllegalMonitorStateException in Java. He was right in terms of the behavior of language but as per him, the interviewer was not completely satisfied with the answer and wanted to explain to him more about it.

Difference between Wait and Sleep, Yield in Java? Example

The difference between wait and sleep or the difference between sleep and yield in Java is one of the popular core Java interview questions and asked on multi-threading interviews. Out of three methods that can be used to pause a thread in Java, sleep() and yield() methods are defined in thread class while wait() is defined in the Object class, which is another interview question. The key difference between wait() and sleep() is that the former is used for inter-thread communication while later is used to introduced to pause the current thread for a short duration. 

Difference between Thread vs Runnable interface in Java

Thread vs Runnable in Java is always been a confusing decision not just for beginners in Java but also for developers who have done a couple of projects in Java. Thread in Java seems easy in comparison to Runnable because you just deal with one class java.lang.Thread while in case of using Runnable to implement Thread you need to deal with both Thread and Runnable two classes. though the decision of using Runnable or Thread should be taken considering differences between Runnable and Thread and the pros and cons of both approaches.

Difference between ExecutorService.submit() and Executor.execute() methods in Java?

What is the difference between Executor.submit() and Executor.execute() method in Java? This is one of the good multi-threading questions for experienced Java programmers, mostly asked in Investment Banks like Barclays, Deutsche Bank, or Citibank. A main difference between the submit() and execute() method is that ExecuterService.submit()can return the result of computation because it has a return type of Future, but the execute() method cannot return anything because return type is void. The core interface in Java 1.5's Executor framework is the Executor interface which defines the execute(Runnable task) method, whose primary purpose is to separate the task from its execution.

Difference between Process and Thread in Java - Example

One of the common questions from programming interviews is, what is the difference between a Thread and a Process? Well, the main difference between them is that a Process is a program that is executing some code and a thread is an independent path of execution in the process. A process can have more than one thread for doing independent tasks e.g. a thread for reading data from disk, a thread for processing that data, and another thread for sending that data over the network. This technique to improve throughput and better utilize CPU power is also known as multi-threading.

What happens when you call Thread.run() instead of Thread.start() in Java? Trick Interview Question

Hello guys, writing multi-threaded and concurrent programs is not easy, not even in Java.  Even senior developers, including myself, make mistakes while writing concurrent Java applications. This is also one of the trickiest areas of Java programming language, where misconceptions outnumber concepts. Considering the amount of misconception an average Java programmer has about multi-threading and concurrency, I thought to start a new series about common multi-threading mistakes done by Java programmers; what is a better way to learn from common real word mistakes.

Top 10 Multithreading and Concurrency Best Practices for Experienced Java Developers

Writing concurrent code is hard and testing correctness with concurrency is even harder. Though Java programming language provides lots of synchronization and concurrency support from language to API level, it eventually comes to an individual's diligence and expertise to write bug-free Java concurrency code. These Java concurrency and multi-threading best practices are a collection of some well-known tips, which help you to write better concurrency code in Java. Some of you may be familiar with these tips but it's often worth revising them time and time again. 

Top 12 Locking, Synchronization and Multithreading Interview Questions for 5 to 7 Years Experienced Java Programmers

Hello guys, if you are an experienced Java developer say 3 to 5 years or 5 to 7 years experience and  preparing for Java Interviews then you very well know that Locking, Synchronization, ConcurrentHashMap, volatile and atomic, compare and swap (CAS), Executor Service, Stream API, and Multithreading in general are quite important and as an experienced Java developer you should be ready for them. In the past, I have shared 50+ Java Multithreading questions, 12 concurrency questions, 21 HashMap questions, and 10 ConcurrentHashMap questions and in this article, I am going to share 10 of my favorite question on Locking, Synchronization and Inter thread communication in Java. If you have been doing Java Interviews then its highly likely that you have already seen this problem but if you haven't you should definitely prepare them.

Top 15 Java Multithreading, Concurrency Interview Questions Answers asked in Investment banks

Multi-threading and concurrency questions are an essential part of any Java interview. If you are going for any Java interview on any Investment bank like Barclays, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, etc for the Cash Equities Front Office Java Developer position, you can expect a lot of multi-threading interview questions on your way. Multi-threading and concurrency are favorite topics on Investment banking interviews,  especially on electronic trading development jobs and they grill candidate on many tricky java thread interview questions. They just want to ensure that the guy has a solid knowledge of multi-threading and concurrent programming in Java because most of them are in the business of performance which provides them a competitive advantage and it's hard to write correct and robust concurrent code.

How to avoid deadlock in Java? Example Tutorial and Tips

How to avoid deadlock in Java? Is one of the popular Java interview question and flavor of the season for multi-threading, asked mostly at a senior level with lots of follow up questions. Even though the problem looks very basic but most of the Java developers get stuck once you start going deep. Interview questions start with, "What is a deadlock?" The answer is simple when two or more threads are waiting for each other to release the resource they need (lock) and get stuck for infinite time, the situation is called deadlock. It will only happen in the case of multitasking or multi-threading.

Top 50 Java Thread and Concurrency Interview Questions Answers for 2 to 5 Years Experienced

You go to any Java interview, senior or junior, experience or freshers,  you are bound to see a couple of questions from the thread, concurrency, and multi-threading. In fact, this built-in concurrency support is one of the strongest points of the Java programming language and helped it to gain popularity among the enterprise world and programmers equally. Most of the lucrative Java developer position demands excellent core Java multi-threading skills and experience in developing, debugging, and tuning high-performance low latency concurrent Java applications. This is the reason, it is one of the most important topics in Java interviews. Multithreading and concurrency are also hard to master the concept and only good developers with solid experience can effectively deal with concurrency issues.

Inter Thread Communication in Java using wait() and notify() - Example Tutorial

Wait and notify methods in Java are used for inter-thread communication i.e. if one thread wants to tell something to another thread, it uses notify() and notifyAll() method of java.lang.Object. A classical example of the wait and notify method is a Producer-Consumer design pattern, where One thread produces and put something on the shared bucket, and then tell the other thread that there is an item for your interest in a shared object, consumer thread than pick than item and do his job, without the wait() and notify(), consumer thread needs to be busy checking, even if there is no change in the state of the shared object.

How to use Lock in Java? ReentrantLock Example Tutorial

Many Java programmers confused themselves like hell while writing multi-threaded Java programs like where to synchronized? Which Lock to use? What Lock to use etc. I often receive a request to explain how to use Locks and ReentrantLock in Java, so I thought to write a simple Java program, which is multi-threaded and uses a rather new Lock interface and ReentrantLock to lock critical section. Remember Lock is your tool to guard shared resources which can be anything like a database, File system, a Prime number Generator, or a Message processor. Before using Locks in the Java program, it’s also better to learn some basics. Lock is an interface from java.util.concurrent package. It was introduced in JDK 1.5 release as an alternative to the synchronized keyword.

Difference between Executor, ExecutorService and Executers class in Java

All three classes Executor, ExecutorService, and Executors are part of Java's Executor framework which provides thread pool facilities to Java applications. Since the creation and management of Threads are expensive and the operating system also imposes restrictions on how many Threads an application can spawn, it's a good idea is to use a pool of threads to execute tasks in parallel, instead of creating a new thread every time a request comes in. This not only improves the response time of the application but also prevent resource exhaustion errors like "java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread".

How Volatile in Java works? Example of volatile keyword in Java

What is a volatile variable in Java and when to use the volatile variable in Java is a famous multi-threading interview question in Java interviews? Though many programmers know what is a volatile variable they fail on the second part i.e. were to use volatile variables in Java as it's not common to have a clear understanding and hands-on on volatile variables in Java. In this tutorial, we will address this gap by providing a simple example of the volatile variable in Java and discussing when to use the volatile variable in Java. Anyway,  the volatile keyword in Java is used as an indicator to Java compiler and Thread that do not cache the value of this variable and always read it from the main memory.

How to use SynchronousQueue in Java? Prouder Consumer Example

SynchronousQueue is a special kind of BlockingQueue in which each inserts operation must wait for a corresponding remove operation by another thread and vice versa. When you call to put() method on SynchronousQueue it blocks until another thread is there to take that element out of the Queue. Similarly, if a thread tries to remove an element and no element is currently present, that thread is blocked until another thread puts an element into the queue. You can correlate SynchronousQueue with athletes (threads) running with Olympic torch, they run with a torch (object need to be passed) and passes it to other athlete waiting at another end.

What is ReentrantLock in Java? Difference between synchronized vs ReentrantLock with Example

ReentrantLock in Java is added on java.util.concurrent package in Java 1.5 along with other concurrent utilities like CountDownLatch, Executors, and CyclicBarrier. ReentrantLock is one of the most useful additions in Java concurrency package and several of concurrent collection classes from java.util.concurrent package is written using ReentrantLock, including ConcurrentHashMap, see How ConcurrentHashMap works in Java for more details. Two key feature of ReentrantLock, which provides more control on lock acquisition is trying to get a lock with the ability to interrupt, and a timeout on waiting for a lock, these are key for writing responsive and scalable systems in Java.

Difference between start and run method in Thread? Example

Why to do one call start method of the thread if start() calls run() in turn" or "What is the difference by calling start() over run() method in java thread" are two widely popular beginner level multi-threading interview question. When a Java programmer start learning Thread, the first thing he learns is to implement thread either overriding run() method of Thread class or implementing Runnable interface and then calling start() method on the thread, but with some experience, he finds that start() method calls run() method internally either by looking API documentation or just poking around, but many of us just don’t care at that time until it been asked in Java Interview.

What is Race Condition in Java Multithreading? Examples

Race condition in Java is a type of concurrency bug or issue that is introduced in your program because of parallel execution of your program by multiple threads at the same time, Since Java is a multi-threaded programming language hence the risk of Race condition is higher in Java which demands a clear understanding of what causes a race condition and how to avoid that. Anyway, Race conditions are just one of the hazards or risks presented by the use of multi-threading in Java just like deadlock in Java. Race conditions occur when two threads operate on the same object without proper synchronization and their operation interleaves on each other.