Operational Java Software Engineer Interview Questions & Answers:

1. Tell us why java is not 100% Object-oriented?

Java is not 100% Object-oriented because it makes use of eight primitive datatypes such as boolean, byte, char, int, float, double, long, short which are not objects.

2. Tell us why do you need to use synchronized methods or blocks?

If threads are being used and a number of threads have to go through a synchronized section of code, only one of them may be executed at a time. This is used to make sure shared variables are not updated by multiple threads.

3. Explain me what is the difference between HashMap and ConcurrentHashMap?

ConcurrentHashMap is thread-safe; that is the code can be accessed by single thread at a time while HashMap is not thread-safe. ConcurrentHashMap does not allow NULL keys while HashMap allows it.

4. Do you know why Java is platform independent?

Platform independent practically means “write once run anywhere”. Java is called so because of its byte codes which can run on any system irrespective of its underlying operating system.

5. Explain me when do you use volatile variables?

When a member variable is accessed by multiple threads and want the value of a volatile field to be visible to all readers (other threads in particular) after a write operation completes on it.

6. Explain me how are Annotations better than a Marker Interfaces?

Annotations lets one achieve the same purpose of conveying metadata about the class to its consumers without creating a separate type for it. Annotations are more powerful, too, letting programmers pass more sophisticated information to classes that “consume” it.

7. Explain me what is singleton class and how can we make a class singleton?

Singleton class is a class whose only one instance can be created at any given time, in one JVM. A class can be made singleton by making its constructor private.

8. Tell me what is the difference between an Iterator and a ListIterator?

This question tests the proper usage of collection iterators. One can only use ListIterator to traverse Lists, and cannot traverse a Set using ListIterator.

What's more, one can only traverse in a forward direction using Iterators. Using ListIterator, one can traverse a List in both the directions (forward and backward).

One cannot obtain indexes while using Iterator. Indexes can be obtained at any point of time while traversing a list using ListIterator. The methods nextIndex() and previousIndex() are used for this purpose.

9. Tell us what is the marker interface in Java?

The marker interface in Java is an interfaces with no field or methods. In other words, it an empty interface in java is called a marker interface. An example of a marker interface is a Serializable, Clonable and Remote interface. These are used to indicate something to the compiler or JVM.

10. Explain me how does the JVM handle storing local variables vs storing objects?

Objects are stored on the heap. Variables are a reference to the object.

Local variables are stored on the stack.