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Secrets Of The Masters: Core Java Job Interview Questions
JDJ Enterprise Editor Yakov Fain Offers 30 Core Java Questions You Might Expect During Job Interviews

JDJ's Enterprise Editor, Yakov Fain (pictured) writes: If you are planning to hit the job market,  you may need to refresh some of the Java basic terms and techniques to prepare yourself for a technical interview. Let me offer you some of the core Java questions that you might expect during the interviews. 

For  most questions  I’ve provided only  short  answers to encourage further research.  I have included only  questions for mid (*) and senior level (**) Java developers. These sample questions could also become handy for people who need to interview Java developers (see also the article "Interviewing Enterprise Java Developers").

30 Java Interview Questions

* Q1. How could Java classes direct program messages to the system console, but error messages, say to a file?

A. The class System has a variable out that represents the standard output, and the variable err that represents the standard error device. By default, they both point at the system console. This how the standard output could be re-directed:

Stream st = new Stream(new FileOutputStream("output.txt")); System.setErr(st); System.setOut(st); 

* Q2. What's the difference between an interface and an abstract class?

A. An abstract class may contain code in method bodies, which is not allowed in an interface. With abstract classes, you have to inherit your class from it and Java does not allow multiple inheritance. On the other hand, you can implement multiple interfaces in your class.

* Q3. Why would you use a synchronized block vs. synchronized method?

A. Synchronized blocks place locks for shorter periods than synchronized methods.

* Q4. Explain the usage of the keyword transient?

A. This keyword indicates that the value of this member variable does not have to be serialized with the object. When the class will be de-serialized, this variable will be initialized with a default value of its data type (i.e. zero for integers).

* Q5. How can you force garbage collection?

A. You can't force GC, but could request it by calling System.gc(). JVM does not guarantee that GC will be started immediately.

* Q6. How do you know if an explicit object casting is needed?

A. If you assign a superclass object to a variable of a subclass's data type, you need to do explicit casting. For example:

Object a; Customer b; b = (Customer) a;

When you assign a subclass to a variable having a supeclass type, the casting is performed automatically. 

* Q7. What's the difference between the methods sleep() and wait()

A. The code sleep(1000); puts thread aside for exactly one second. The code wait(1000), causes a wait of up to one second. A thread could stop waiting earlier if it receives the notify() or notifyAll() call. The method wait() is defined in the class Object and the method sleep() is defined in the class Thread.

* Q8. Can you write a Java class that could be used both as an applet as well as an application?

A. Yes. Add a main() method to the applet.

* Q9. What's the difference between constructors and other methods?

A. Constructors must have the same name as the class and can not return a value. They are only called once while regular methods could be called many times.

* Q10. Can you call one constructor from another if a class has multiple constructors

A. Yes. Use this() syntax.

* Q11. Explain the usage of Java packages.

A. This is a way to organize files when a project consists of multiple modules. It also helps resolve naming conflicts when different packages have classes with the same names. Packages access level also allows you to protect data from being used by the non-authorized classes.

* Q12. If a class is located in a package, what do you need to change in the OS environment to be able to use it?

A. You need to add a directory or a jar file that contains the package directories to the CLASSPATH environment variable. Let's say a class Employee belongs to a package com.xyz.hr; and is located in the file c:\dev\com\xyz\hr\Employee.java. In this case, you'd need to add c:\dev to the variable CLASSPATH. If this class contains the method main(), you could test it from a command prompt window as follows:

c:\>java com.xyz.hr.Employee
 
* Q13. What's the difference between J2SDK 1.5 and J2SDK 5.0?

A.There's no difference, Sun Microsystems just re-branded this version.

* Q14. What would you use to compare two String variables - the operator == or the method equals()?

A. I'd use the method equals() to compare the values of the Strings and the == to check if two variables point at the same instance of a String object.

* Q15. Does it matter in what order catch statements for FileNotFoundException and IOExceptipon are written?

A. Yes, it does. The FileNoFoundException is inherited from the IOException. Exception's subclasses have to be caught first.

* Q16. Can an inner class declared inside of a method access local variables of this method?

A. It's possible if these variables are final.

* Q17. What can go wrong if you replace && with & in the following code:

String a=null; if (a!=null && a.length()>10) {...}

A. A single ampersand here would lead to a NullPointerException.

* Q18. What's the main difference between a Vector and an ArrayList

A. Java Vector class is internally synchronized and ArrayList is not.

* Q19. When should the method invokeLater()be used?

A. This method is used to ensure that Swing components are updated through the event-dispatching thread.

* Q20. How can a subclass call a method or a constructor defined in a superclass?

A. Use the following syntax: super.myMethod(); To call a constructor of the superclass, just write super(); in the first line of the subclass's constructor.

About Yakov Fain
Yakov Fain is a managing principal of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , "Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters" in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor. Currently Yakov works on the book for O'Reilly "Enterprise Application Development with Flex".

YOUR FEEDBACK
Calvin Austin wrote: Yes webrunner was the original internal project name for the original browser. I was lucky to get a copy internally in 1995. I wasn't involved in the renaming but they would have done a trademark search at some point
HotJava wrote: Java used to be Oak but what was the HotJava web browser first called, wasn't it WebRunner? Whatever happened to that name?
from tiny acorns wrote: ### "Project Oak" seems like just yesterday. ### Check out the useful history of Oak (and of the Green Project that spawned it) at http://today.java.net/jag/old/green/ Another major byproduct of the Green project was a little cartoon character named "Duke" - invented and drawn by Joe Palrang.
J-History wrote: [[[ The Java platform has certainly come a long way in 10 years, but I'm sure you'll agree it's been an interesting ride. ]]] 10 years! Where does the time go?! "Project Oak" seems like just yesterday.
webdevguy wrote: HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAVA! may your offspring be open source and free.
Jonathan Bruce wrote: Nice article Calvin - I remember working on JDK for the first time when I started with Sun in '98 working on the JNDI API and it's LDAP, COSNaming and RMI provider. It is interesting to review this history, and I too remember the start-up feel that was the buzz of the Cupertino office. I think now it is important to recognize the maturity of the Java 5.0 platform and how in the future the outside in view developers have of Java 6.0 should trigger early adoption of the new platform. As a fellow Sun retiree, I remain invested in the continued success of the Java platform. -Jonathan Bruce Technology Evangelist - XQuery
Calvin Austin wrote: Thanks for the comments Alex. Swing was used as a catch all term inside Sun although officially the set of components, including Swing were JFC (there was no JFC team per say) One other reason for Java 2 was the change in licensing, anyone could sign up to port JDK 1.x to any platform for research use. With Java 2 you had to agree to the SCSL terms instead.
Alex Blewitt wrote: JFC was the Java Foundation Components, and contained more than just Swing; JFC contained what became the standard Collections classes introduced in Java 2, and other improvements in text/message formatting from IBM. Java 2 was created as a marketing name in 1999 to make businesses aware that it was a language ready for prime-time application use. Before then, the only serious contender for 'real' applications was the Corel package for word-processing, that died a death because they just translated C++ code into Java code, without doing any kind of redesign to suit Java's garbage collection model sufficiently. Java 2 was also the start of Sun's inconsistent naming conventions. Java 1.1.1 through 1.1.8 was sensible enough; but Sun didn't want people to know about how many bugfixes/releases (or compatibility issues) were given out; hence, we now have 1.2.1, and 1.2.2, 1.2.2_01b7... e...
Calvin Austin wrote: You are right, I meant garbage collection. You could make a case for the gc shuffling between old and new space as allocation though
B. Smith-Mannschott wrote: QUOTE: [java 1.2.2] ... introduced new garbage **allocation** techniques ... yea, programming in java feels that way on bad days, but I'm sure that's not what you meant.
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