Top 20 Core Java Interview Questions and Answers asked on Investment

Banks
Core Java Interview Question Answer
This is a new series of sharing core Java interview question and answer on Finance
domain and mostly on big Investment bank.Many of these Java interview questions are
asked on JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Barclays or Goldman Sachs. Banks
mostly asked core Java interview questions from multi-threading, collection,
serialization, coding and OOPS design principles. Anybody who is preparing for
any J ava developer Interview on any Investment bank can be benefited from these
set of core Java Interview questions and answers. I have collected these Java
questions from my friends and I thought to share with you all. I hope this will be helpful
for both of us. It's also beneficial to practice some programming interview questions
because in almost all Java interview, there is at-least 1 or 2 coding questions appear.
Please share answers for unanswered Java interview questions and let us know how
good these Java interview questions are?

These Java interview questions are mix of easy, tough and tricky Java questions
e.g. Why multiple inheritance is not supported in Java is one of the tricky question in
java. Most questions are asked on Senior and experienced level i.e. 3, 4, 5 or 6 years of
Java experience e.g. How HashMap works in Java, which is most popular on
experienced Java interviews. By the way recently I was looking at answers and
comments made on Java interview questions given in this post and I found some of
them quite useful to include into main post to benefit all. By the way apart from blogs
and articles, you can also take advantage of some books, which are especially written
for clearing any programming interviews and some focused on Java programming, two
books which comes in minds are programming interview exposed and Java/J2EE
interview companion from fellow blogger Arulkumaran. Former is focused on
programming in general and lot of other related topics e.g. data structures, algorithms,
database, sql, networking and behavioral questions, while later is completely dedicated
to Java J2EE concepts.

Core Java Interview Questions Answers in Finance
domain
1. What is immutable object? Can you write immutable object?

Immutable classes are Java classes whose objects can not be modified once created.
Any modification in Immutable object result in new object. For example String is
immutable in Java. Mostly Immutable classes are also final in Java, in order to prevent
sub classes from overriding methods, which can compromise Immutability. You can
achieve same functionality by making member as non final but private and not
modifying them except in constructor. Apart form obvious, you also need to make sure
that, you should not expose internals of Immutable object, especially if it contains a
mutable member. Similarly, when you accept value for mutable member from client
e.g.java.util.Date, use clone() method keep separate copy for yourself, to prevent
risk of malicious client modifying mutable reference after setting it. Same precaution
needs to be taken while returning value for a mutable member, return another separate
copy to client, never return original reference held by Immutable class. You can see my
post How to create Immutable class in Java for step by step guide and code examples.


2. Does all property of immutable object needs to be final?
Not necessary, as stated above you can achieve same functionality by making member
as non final but private and not modifying them except in constructor. Don't provide
setter method for them and if it is a mutable object, then don't ever leak any reference
for that member. Remember making a reference variable final, only ensures that it will
not be reassigned a different value, but you can still change individual properties of
object, pointed by that reference variable. This is one of the key point, Interviewer like to
hear from candidates. See my post on Java final variables, to learn more about them.


3. What is the difference between creating String as new() and literal?
When we create string with new() Operator, its created in heap and not added into
string pool while String created using literal are created in String pool itself
which exists in PermGen area of heap.

String str = new String("Test");

does not put the object str in String pool , we need to
call String.intern() method which is used to put them into String pool explicitly. its
only when you create String object as String literal e.g. String s = "Test" Java
automatically put that into String pool. By the way there is a catch here, Since we are
passing arguments as "Test", which is a String literal, it will also create another object
as "Test" on string pool. This is the one point, which has gone unnoticed, until
knowledgeable readers of Javarevisited blog suggested it.


4. How does substring () inside String works?
Another good Java interview question, I think answer is not sufficient but here it is
Substring creates new object out of source string by taking a portion of original string.
This question was mainly asked to see if developer is familiar with risk of memory leak,
which substring can create. Until Java 1.7, substring holds reference of original
character array, which means even a substring of 5 character long, can prevent 1GB
character array from garbage collection, by holding a strong reference. This issue is
fixed in Java 1.7, where original character array is not referenced any more, but that
change also made creation of substring bit costly in terms of time. Earlier it was on the
range of O(1), which could be O(n) in worst case on Java 7. See my post How
SubString works in Java for detailed answer of this Java question.


5. Which two method you need to implement to use an Object as key in HashMap
?
In order to use any object as Key in HashMap or Hashtable, it must implements equals
and hashcode method in Java. Read How HashMap works in Java for detailed
explanation on how equals and hashcode method is used to put and get object from
HashMap. You can also see my post 5 tips to correctly override equals in Java to learn
more about equals.


6. Where does equals and hashcode method comes in picture during get
operation?
This core Java interview question is follow-up of previous Java question and candidate
should know that once you mention hashCode, people are most likely ask, how they
are used in HashMap.When you provide key object, first it's hashcode method is called
to calculate bucket location. Since a bucket may contain more than one entry as linked
list, each of those Map.Entry object are evaluated by using equals() method to
see if they contain the actual key object or not. See How HashMap works in Java for
detailed explanation.


7. How do you handle error condition while writing stored procedure or accessing
stored procedure from java?
This is one of the tough Java interview question and its open for all, my friend didn't
know the answer so he didn't mind telling me. My take is that stored procedure should
return error code if some operation fails but if stored procedure itself fail than
catching SQLException is only choice.


8. What is difference
between Executor.submit() and Executer.execute() method ?
This Java interview question is from my list of Top 15 Java multi-threading question
answers, Its getting popular day by day because of huge demand of Java developer
with good concurrency skill. Answer of this Java interview question is that former returns
an object of Future which can be used to find result from worker thread)

By the way @vinit Saini suggested a very good point related to this core Java
interview question

There is a difference when looking at exception handling. If your tasks throws an
exception and if it was submitted with execute this exception will go to the uncaught
exception handler (when you don't have provided one explicitly, the default one will
just print the stack trace to System.err). If you submitted the task with submit any
thrown exception, checked exception or not, is then part of the task's return status. For
a task that was submitted with submit and that terminates with an exception, the
Future.get will re-throw this exception, wrapped in an ExecutionException.


9. What is the difference between factory and abstract factory pattern?
This Java interview question is from my list of 20 Java design pattern interview
question and its open for all of you to answer.
@Raj suggested
Abstract Factory provides one more level of abstraction. Consider different factories
each extended from an Abstract Factory and responsible for creation of different
hierarchies of objects based on the type of factory.
E.g. AbstractFactory extended
by AutomobileFactory, UserFactory, RoleFactory etc. Each individual factory
would be responsible for creation of objects in that genre.
You can also refer What is Factory method design pattern in Java to know more details.


10. What is Singleton? is it better to make whole method synchronized or only
critical section synchronized ?
Singleton in Java is a class with just one instance in whole Java application, for
example java.lang.Runtime is a Singleton class. Creating Singleton was tricky prior
Java 4 but once Java 5 introduced Enum its very easy. see my article How to create
thread-safe Singleton in Java for more details on writing Singleton using enum and
double checked locking which is purpose of this Java interview question.


11. Can you write critical section code for singleton?
This core Java question is followup of previous question and expecting candidate to
write Java singleton using double checked locking. Remember to use volatile variable to
make Singleton thread-safe. check 10 Interview questions on Singleton Pattern in
Java for more details and questions answers

12. Can you write code for iterating over hashmap in Java 4 and Java 5 ?

Tricky one but he managed to write using while and for loop. Actually there are four
ways to iterate over any Map in Java, one involves using keySet() and iterating over
key and then using get() method to retrieve values, which is bit expensive. Second
method involves using entrySet() and iterating over them either by using foreach
loop or while with Iterator.hasNext() method. This one is better approach
because both key and value object are available to you during Iteration and you don't
need to call get() method for retrieving value, which could give O(n) performance in
case of huge linked list at one bucket. See my post 4 ways to iterate over Map in
Java for detailed explanation and code examples.


13. When do you override hashcode and equals() ?
Whenever necessary especially if you want to do equality check based upon business
logic rather than object equality e.g. two employee object are equal if they have
same emp_id, despite the fact that they are two different object, created by different
part of code. Also overriding both these methods are must if you want to use them as
key in HashMap. Now as part of equals-hashcode contract in Java, when you override
equals, you must overide hashcode as well, otherwise your object will not break
invariant of classes e.g. Set, Map which relies on equals() method for functioning
properly. You can also check my post 5 tips on equals in Java to understand subtle
issue which can arise while dealing with these two methods.


14. What will be the problem if you don't override hashcode() method ?
If you don't override equals method, than contract between equals and hashcode will
not work, according to which, two object which are equal by equals() must have same
hashcode. In this case other object may return different hashcode and will be stored on
that location, which breaks invariant of HashMap class, because they are not supposed
to allow duplicate keys. When you add object using put() method, it iterate through
all Map.Entry object present in that bucket location, and update value of previous
mapping, if Map already contains that key. This will not work if hashcode is not
overridden. You can also see my post on tips to override hashcode in Java for more
details.


15. Is it better to synchronize critical section of getInstance() method or
whole getInstance() method ?
Answer is only critical section, because if we lock whole method than every time some
some one call this method, it will have to wait even though we are not creating any
object. In other words, synchronization is only needed, when you create object, which
happens only once. Once object has created, there is no need for any synchronization.
In fact, that's very poor coding in terms of performance, as synchronized method reduce
performance upto 10 to 20 times. By the way, there are several ways to create thread-
safe singleton in Java, which you can also mention as part of this question or any
follow-up.


16. What is the difference when String is gets created using literal or new()
operator ?
When we create string with new() operator, its created in heap only and not added into
string pool, while String created using literal are created in String pool itself which exists
in PermGen area of heap. You can put such string object into pool by
calling intern() method. If you happen to create same String object multiple
times, intern() can save some memory for you.


17. Does not overriding hashcode() method has any performance implication ?
This is a good question and open to all , as per my knowledge a poor hashcode function
will result in frequent collision in HashMap which eventually increase time for adding an
object into Hash Map.


18. Whats wrong using HashMap in multithreaded environment? When get()
method go to infinite loop ?
Well nothing is wrong, it depending upon how you use. For example if you initialize the
HashMap just by one thread and then all threads are only reading from it, then it's
perfectly fine. One example of this is a Map which contains configuration properties.
Real problem starts when at-least one of those thread is updating HashMap i.e. adding,
changing or removing any key value pair. Sinceput() operation can cause re-sizing
and which can further lead to infinite loop, that's why either you should
use Hashtable or ConcurrentHashMap, later is better.



19. Give a simplest way to find out the time a method takes for execution without
using any profiling tool?
this questions is suggested by @Mohit
Read the system time just before the method is invoked and immediately after method
returns. Take the time difference, which will give you the time taken by a method for
execution.

To put it in code

long start = System.currentTimeMillis ();
method ();
long end = System.currentTimeMillis ();

System.out.println (Time taken for execution is + (end start));

Remember that if the time taken for execution is too small, it might show that it is taking
zero milliseconds for execution. Try it on a method which is big enough, in the sense the
one which is doing considerable amount of processing

20. How would you prevent a client from directly instantiating your concrete
classes? For example, you have a Cache interface and two implementation
classes MemoryCache and DiskCache, How do you ensure there is no object of this
two classes is created by client using new() keyword.

I leave this ququestion for you to practice and think about, before I give answer. I am
sure you can figure out right way to do this, as this is one of the important decision to
keep control of classes in your hand, great from maintenance perspective.


Recommended Books to prepare Java Interviews

Apart from blogs and articles, you can also take help of some books, which are especially written to help with
programming interviews, covering wide range of questions starting from object oriented design, coding, Java basic
concepts, networking, database, SQL, XML and problem solving skills. Following books are from my personal
collection, which I often used to revise before going for any interview.



Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job

Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions

Java/J2EE Job Interview Companion by Arulkumaran Kumaraswamipillai
Elements of Programming Interviews: 300 Questions and Solutions


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How Volatile in Java works ? Example of volatile keyword in Java
Why String is immutable or final in Java
How to avoid deadlock in Java Threads
Overriding equals() and hashCode() method in Java and Hibernate - Example, Tips and
Best Practices
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Labels: core java , interview questions
65 comments :
Scott said...
all answers related to singletons in Java seem to ignore the "double-
checked locking is broken" problem; it is best to initialize the single
instance in the class initializer.

private final SingletonClass INSTANCE = new SingletonClass();
April 11, 2011 at 7:23 PM
Javin Paul said...
Thanks Job good to know that these java interview questions are useful
for you.
April 15, 2011 at 7:49 PM
Javin Paul said...
Thanks a lot Anonymous for informing us about subtle details about
Substring() method , I guess Interviewer was looking for that information
in his question "How does substring () inside String works?" because if
substring also shares same byte array then its something to be aware of.
April 15, 2011 at 7:51 PM
Javin Paul said...
Hi Scott,
your solution is correct but with the advent of java 5 and now guarantee
of volatile keyword and change in Java memory model guarantees that
double checking of singleton will work. another solution is to use Enum
Singeton. you can check my post about Singleton here Singleton Pattern
in Java
April 15, 2011 at 7:53 PM
Javin Paul said...
Hi Anand,
Thanks for answering question "How does substring () inside String works?"
April 15, 2011 at 7:54 PM
emt said...
Use can use a static holder to handle the singleton creation instead of
double checked mechanism.

public class A {
private static class Holder
{
public static A singleton = new A();
}

public static A getInstance()
{
return Holder.singleton;
}
April 29, 2011 at 11:50 PM
Raj said...
Stored Procedure Error: One way to signal an error is from what is
returned.

Factory/Abstract Factory: Abstract Factory provides one more level of
abstraction. Consider different factories each extended from an Abstract
Factory and responsible for creation of different hierarchies of objects
based on the type of factory. E.g. AbstractFactory extended by
AutomobileFactory, UserFactory, RoleFactory etc. Each individual factory
would be responsible for creation of objects in that genre.
June 9, 2011 at 2:29 AM
Anonymous said...
I only see 18 questions and most of them are answered wrong or not at
all....



Also, your english is terrible.
July 24, 2011 at 5:56 PM
kamal said...
Question3 Awnser::::::::
String s = "Test";

Will first look for the String "Test" in the string constant pool. If found s
will be made to refer to the found object. If not found, a new String
object is created, added to the pool and s is made to refer to the newly
created object.

String s = new String("Test");

Will first create a new string object and make s refer to it. Additionally
an entry for string "Test" is made in the string constant pool, if its not
already there.

So assuming string "Test" is not in the pool, the first declaration will
create one object while the second will create two objects.
August 3, 2011 at 12:33 AM
javalearner said...
@Kamal, I don't think
String s = new String("Test");
will put the object in String pool , it it does then why do one need
String.intern() method which is used to put Strings into String pool
explicitly. its only when you create String objec t as String literal e.g.
String s = "Test" it put the String in pool.
August 3, 2011 at 6:52 PM
Arulkumaran.K said...
Keep up the good work, and a small suggestion,

wrap your code snippets in <pre class="brush: csharp"> code snippet goes
here </pre>

it makes your code snippets more readable.
September 29, 2011 at 1:04 PM
Anonymous said...
Abstract Factory vs Factory(Factory method)
AF is used to create a GROUP of logically RELATED objects, AF
implemented using FM.
Factory just create one of the subclass.
As I remember in GoF:
AF could create widgets for different types of UI (buttons, windows,
labels), but we could have windows, unix etc. UI types, created objects
are related by domain.
October 16, 2011 at 1:57 AM
Jennifer said...
If you want to know the top 50 interview questions in banking plus get
word-by-word answers to tough banking interview questions like Why do
you want to do investment banking?, then check out the Free Tutorials
at [www] insideinvesmentbanking [dot] com. Its a really useful site and
its made by bankers who know the interview room inside out. PS full
disclosure, I am actually a current student of IIB and I do receive help
with recruiting (eg mock interview) in exchange for letting other students
know about the Free Tutorials.
November 10, 2011 at 2:30 PM
Anonymous said...
These Java interview question are equally beneficial for 2 years
experience or beginners, 4 years experience Java developers
(intermediate) and more than 6 years experience of Java developer i.e.
Advanced level. Most of the questions comes under 2 to 4 years but some
of them are good for 6 years experience guy as well like questions related
to executor framework.
November 15, 2011 at 11:10 PM
seenu said...
I agree most of these java interview questions asked during experienced
developers and senior developers level. though some questions are also
good for beginners in Java but most of them are for senior developers in
java
November 24, 2011 at 12:36 AM
Anonymous said...
Another popular Java interview question is why Java does not support
multiple inheritance, passing reference, or operator overloading, can you
please provide answers for those questions. these java interview
questions are little tough to me.
January 29, 2012 at 6:24 PM
Anonymous said...
..after more than 2.5 year break in my software career, your blog
refreshed most of my java knowledge..thank u so much..i want u to write
more n more for beginners n people like me..all the best
February 13, 2012 at 9:54 AM
Anonymous said...
Hi I am looking for some real tough Java interview question which
explores some advanced concept and make sense. if you know real tough,
challenging and advanced Java interview questions than please post here.
April 9, 2012 at 8:50 PM
Suraj said...
Hi, I am looking for Java interview questions from Investment banks like
Nomura, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanly, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Bank of America
or Merrylynch etc. If you have Java questions asked in Nomura or any of
these banks please share.
April 22, 2012 at 8:22 PM
Vineet said...
Can any one please share core java interview questions from morgan
stanley , JP Morgan Chase , Nomura, RBS and Bank of America for
experienced professionals of 6 to 7 years experience ? I heard that they
mostly asked Garbage Collection, Generics, Design and profiling related
questions to senior candidate but some real questions from those
companies will really help.
June 11, 2012 at 6:31 PM
Buddhiraj said...
Hi Javarevisited, looking core java interview questions and answers for
experienced in pdf format so that I can use if offline, Can you please help
to convert these Java questions in pdf ?
June 11, 2012 at 6:43 PM
Rajat said...
@Vineet, few Java programming questions asked in google :

1) Difference between Hashtable and HashMap?
2) difference between final, finalize and finaly?
3) write LRU cache in Java ?

let me know if you get more Java questions from google.
June 18, 2012 at 2:25 AM
Anand VijayaKumar said...
Javin

For question 7 -we usually handle the exception and divert the user to a
standard error page with the exception trace as a page variable. The user
will have an option to email the support team through a button click and
the error trace gets sent to support. This way we can know what went
wrong in the application and fix it.

Typically these kind of errors are due to poor data error handling in
stored procedure like a missed null check or a char variable of incorrect
size etc which are exposed only when I consistent data flows into the app
which was never tested during development or uat.

Anand
June 27, 2012 at 6:01 AM
Javin said...
@Anand, you bring an important point. size and value of variables are
major cause of error in Stored procedure and if not handle correctly may
break Java application. I guess purpose of that java interview question is
to check whether you verify inputs in Java or not before passing to Stored
procedure and similarly when you receive response. Thanks for your
comment mate.

Javin
June 27, 2012 at 6:27 AM
Anonymous said...
1.When we create string with new () its created in heap and not added
into string pool while String created using literal are created in String
pool itself which exists in Perm area of heap.


2.String s = new String("Test");
will put the object in String pool , it it does then why do one need
String.intern() method which is used to put Strings into String pool
explicitly. its only when you create String object as String literal e.g.
String s = "Test" it put the String in pool.

The above 1 & 2 Stmts are contradicting... when it will in pool and when
it will be in heap?
July 24, 2012 at 5:19 AM
Bogdan said...
...aad here's some more:


+1
0
vote
Answer #1

Hey!
Ill try to give you some examples, differentiated by the level of the
candidate applying:

**UPDATE**: If you are a junior java developer or an aspiring one, I
strongly recommend you to take first the OCJP certification before going
to an interview. This can increase your chances to succes big time, as
well as your entry salary proven and tested by myself! :)

1) Junior java developer
a) Basic ocjp (former scjp) questions:
What does static, final mean, purposes;
How many accesibility modifiers exist? Please describe them.
Why do you need a main method?
How many constructors can you have?
Define overwriting and overloading
Give java API implementations for overwriting and overloading
Describe the String class unique properties
StringBuilder vs StringBuffer
Collections : please describe, give some examples and compare them to
eachother
ArrayList vs Vector
HashMap vs HashTable
Whats a tree
Whats a map
Multithreading: describe the management in java
Whats a semaphone?
How many states are there for threads?
Describe the usage for synchronized word (2)
Serialization in java a descrition and usage
Garbage collection in java description and usage
Can you guarantee the garbage collection process?
b) Simple design pattern questions:
Singleton please describe main features and coding
Factory please describe main features and coding
Have you used others? please describe them

2) Intermediate and Senior level depending on rate of good responses,
additional questions to 1):

http://centraladvisor.com/programming-2/java/java-developer-
interview
August 1, 2012 at 7:25 AM
Bhanu P. said...
Thanks dude, most of your Java interview question is asked on Interview
on Sapient, Capagemini, Morgan Stanley and Nomura.I was giving
interview on HSBC last weekend and they ask me How SubString works in
Java :). Infosys, TCS, CTS, Barclays Java interview questions at-least one
from your blog. We were giving client side interview for UBS hongkong
and they ask How HashMap works in Java, I don't have word to thank you.
Please keep us posting some more tough Java interview question from
2011 and 2012 , which is recent.
August 31, 2012 at 3:20 AM
Prabha kumari said...
Can anyone please share Java interview Question asked on Tech
Mahindra, Patni, LnT Infotech and Mahindra Satyam. Urgently required,
interview scheduled in two days.
August 31, 2012 at 3:22 AM
Karan said...
Some Java programmer ask for Java questions for 2 years experience,
Java questions for 4 years experience, questions for Beginners in Java,
questions for experienced Java programmer etc etc. Basically all these
are just short cut, you should be good on what are you doing. You
automatically gain experience while working in Java and should be able
to answer any Java question up-to your level.
September 2, 2012 at 11:43 PM
Putti said...
Hi Guys, Can some one share Java interview questions from Directi,
Thoughtworks, Wipro, TCS and Capegemini for experienced Java
programmer 6+ years experience ?
September 18, 2012 at 8:46 PM
Sonam said...
Hi , Does Amazon or Microsoft ask questions on Java ? I am looking for
some Java questions asked on Microsoft, Amazon and other technology
companies, if you know please share.
September 25, 2012 at 11:57 PM
Arulkumaran Kumaraswamipillai said...
You have no control over what questions get asked in job interviews. All
you can do is brush up on the key fundamentals.
October 17, 2012 at 6:50 PM
Anonymous said...
your questions are good but answers are not satisfactory. we know better
than your answer. try to give some new answer so that someone will read
with a interest.
January 6, 2013 at 8:01 PM
Ravi said...
Hi Javin,

I'd like to thank you for putting huge effort in creating such nice
collection.

Kindly update following in your blog:
Regarding Question-3. you wrote:

String s = new String("Test"); does not put the object in String pool

This is not correct. using new will create two objects one in normal heap
and another in Pool and s will point to object in heap.

It will be nice for others if you can update this in your blog.
January 28, 2013 at 12:16 AM
Javin @ ClassLoader in Java said...
Hi Ravi, where did you read that? I have never heard about String object
created on both heap and pool. Object is placed into pool when you call
intern method on String object.
January 28, 2013 at 4:09 AM
Anonymous said...
Can you please suggest some latest Java interview questions from 2012,
2011 and what is trending now days. Questions like Iterator vs
Enumeration is way older and I think latest question on Java is more on
Concurrency.
January 28, 2013 at 10:47 PM
garima said...
Hi Javin,
String s = new String("Test"); // creates two objects and one reference
variable
In this case, because we used the new keyword, Java will create a new
String object
in normal (nonpool) memory, and s will refer to it. In addition, the literal
"Test" will
be placed in the pool.
January 30, 2013 at 7:19 AM
Anonymous said...
Although, questions are good, you can add lot more interview questions
form Java 5, 6 and Java 7. Even lamda expression from Java 8 can be a
nice question. I remember, having interview with Amazon, Google and
Microsoft, there were hardly any Java question, but when I interviewed
by Nomura, HeadStrong, and Citibank, there are lots of questions from
Java, Generics, Enum etc. Lesson learned, always research about what
kind of question asked in a company, before going to interview.
March 12, 2013 at 11:04 PM
Dheeraj said...
Can you please post latest Java Interview Questions from Investment
banks like Citibank, Credit Suisse, Barclays, ANZ, Goldman Sachs, Morgan
Stanly, CLSA, JP Morgan and some high frequency hedge funds like
Millenium? I am preparing for Java interview, and looking for recent
questions asked in 2012, 2013 or may be in last couple of month. If you
can get question from Singapore, HongKong or London, that would be
really helpful, but I don't mind question form Pune, Bangalore or Mumbai
even.

Cheers
Dheeraj
March 28, 2013 at 2:46 AM
Thorsten Hoeger said...
Hi, for number 19 it might be better to use System.nanoTime() as
currentTimeMillis may have problems with small intervals.
March 30, 2013 at 2:31 AM
Peter said...
Surprised to See no questions from Java IO or NIO. I think, Investment
banks used lot of non blocking I/O code for socket programming,
connecting system with TCP/IP. In Exchange Connectivity code, I have
seen lot of use ByteBuffer for reading positional protocol. I think, you
should also include questions from Garbage Collection tuning, Java
concurrency package, very hot at the moment.
March 31, 2013 at 9:01 PM
jv said...
q3. What is the difference between creating String as new() and literal?
ans is not correct bcz String x=new String("abc")-
creates two object.one is in heap memory and second is in constant string
pool.
April 2, 2013 at 8:23 PM
Deepak said...
Hello, Can some one please share interview questions from ANZ Banglore
and Singapore location, I need it urgently.
April 9, 2013 at 9:30 PM
Anonymous said...
There is lot more difference in Java Interviews in India and other
countries like USA (NewYork), UK(London), Singapore, Hongkong or any
other europian counties. India is mostly about theoretical knowledge e.g
difference between StringBuffer and StirngBuilder, final, finalize or
finally , bla bla bla............

USA in particular is more about Code, they will give you a problem and
ask you to code solution , write unit test, produce design document in
limited time usually 3 to 4 hours. One of the example is coding solution
for Vending Machine, CoffeMaker, ATM Machine, PortfolioManager, etc .

Trends on other countries are also more balanced towards code e.g.
writing code to prevent deadlock (that's a tricky one), So be prepare
accordingly.

RAJAT
April 11, 2013 at 9:02 PM
Anonymous said...
Hi Javin, Can you please share some Core Java questions from Java 6 and
Java 7? I heard they are asking new features introduced in Java 6 as well
as Java 7. Please help
April 19, 2013 at 1:07 AM
Anonymous said...
How HashMap works, this question was asked to me on Barclays Capital
Java Interview question, would hae read this article before, surely helped
me.
April 22, 2013 at 12:04 AM
Gourav Yadav said...
@Ravi,Garima,Javin

its regarding String creation in Pool

I tested a small code and giving results like below:

String s="Test";
String s1=new String("Test");

System.out.println(s==s1);//return false
System.out.print(s==s1.intern()); //retun true

If we go by concept that string creation adds string to pool also then first
result should be true as if already same string(mean s) is present in pool
then same object is returned back so s1 should point to s but the result is
coming as false.

On the contrary,when we invoke intern method on s1 and then compare it
returns true as it adds string to pool which is normal working of intern
method.

Please correct me if I am wrong.
April 22, 2013 at 1:19 AM
Anonymous said...
hi Javin, Can you please share some Citibank Java Interview questions? I
have an interview with Citibank Singapore for Algorithmic trading
developer position, and expecting few Java questions? Would be great if
you could share some questions from Citibank, Credit Suisse, UBS or ANZ,
these are my target companies. Cheers
April 29, 2013 at 11:41 PM
Gautam said...
@Anonymous, are you asking for Citigroup Java developer position or
Citibank?
May 1, 2013 at 7:18 PM
supriya marathe said...
one question commonly asked is why JVM or why is jvm platform
independent
May 24, 2013 at 6:28 AM
Anonymous said...
@supriya, JVM is platform dependent, only bytecode is platform
independent.
May 29, 2013 at 5:30 AM
Nikhil said...
Nikhil: Question 19 To find out time taken by method to execute
System.currentTimeInMillis() will not be accurate as it will also include
time for which current thread waited due to context switch. Below
approach should be used:

ThreadMXBean threadMX = ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean();

long start = threadMX.getCurrentThreadUserTime();
// time-consuming operation here
long finish = threadMX.getCurrentThreadUserTime();

http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/2008/03/java_tip_how_get_cpu_an
d_user_time_benchmarking
June 1, 2013 at 8:55 AM
Ravi said...
@Javin,

I read it in SCJP for Java 6 book by Kathy Sierra page 434. I am copying
and pasting same here..

----------------------
String s = "abc";

// creates one String object and one reference variable. In this simple
case, "abc" will go in the pool and s will refer to it.


String s = new String("abc");

// creates two objects, and one reference variable. In this case, because
we used the new keyword, Java will create a new String object
in normal (nonpool) memory, and s will refer to it. In addition, the literal
"abc" will
be placed in the pool.
----------------------
June 9, 2013 at 3:24 AM
Xhotery said...
These questions are quite basic and only useful for freshers or beginners
Java developers. I wouldn't say, you can expect this question as Senior
Java developer. Everyone knows answers, there is nothing special about
it. definitely not TOP questions in my opinion.
August 14, 2013 at 7:33 PM
Anonymous said...
I agree with Xhotery, this questions are from 2012 and 2011 years, now
it's 2013. In order to crack Java interview today, you need to focus
extensively on JVM internals, deeper knowledge of Java Concurrency,
sophisticated open source library and good knowledge of frameworks like
Spring, Hibernate, Maven, and even bit of functional programming
knowledge is required. In recent Java interviews, peoples are asking
about lambdas of Java 8 and How it's going to improve performance,
questions about functional interface and new date and time library. Even
questions from Java 7 e.g. try with resource and String in Switch are
quite popular nowadays. So be more advanced and prepare relevant
questions, which is popular in 2013, not two years back.
August 26, 2013 at 7:41 PM
Anonymous said...
Some of the Interview questions for senior developers :

1. Difference between Abstract & Interface - given a situation what would
you choose between abstration & interface
2) Difference between inheritance & composition
3. Difference between Arraylist and linked list
4. difference between sleep and wait
5. Explain about hashmap ( methods in hashmap & the project in which
we have used the hashmap more about equalsto and hashcode)
6. Explain about the methods in Object
7. What is coupling
8. Struts config file - can there be multiple configs
9. Design patterns - factory , abstract factory, singleton implemented?
August 27, 2013 at 4:31 AM
Anonymous said...
These questions and answers are ok, but they look more suited for junior
developers than senior engineers to me.

Just few quick remarks from me:

1. Immutability in Java is not that easy to achieve, as long as we have
reflexion. Of course, in theory, reflexion can be disabled from a security
provider. But in practice, a Java application uses several technologies
that rely on reflexion (anything that does dependency injection (Spring,
EJB containers etc.), anything that uses "convention over configuration"
(ex: expression language etc.)), so in practice it's not possible to disable
reflexion most of the times.

10. In Java a java-core environment, singleton means single instance per
class loader (not per application!). In other contexts it may mean single
instance per container, etc.

19. Your answer here is absolutely wrong. On one hand, if you just invoke
that method for the very first time, you'll not find the net amount of time
taken by method execution, but the gross amount of time including
method execution plus class loading time for all classes that are referred
for the first time inside that method. Second thing, by measuring that
way, you completely ignore how java works: all the adaptive optimization
the JIT does at runtime dramatically changes the execution time after a
number of method calls. Actually, the first call of a method is the
wrongest way to measure its execution time.
September 16, 2013 at 1:57 AM
jitu said...
Hi Javin,

I'd like to thank you for putting huge effort in creating such nice
collection.

Kindly update following in your blog:
Regarding Question-3. you wrote:

String s = new String("Test"); does not put the object in String pool

This is not correct. using new will create two objects one in normal heap
and another in Pool and s will point to object in heap.

Reference : Effective Java second edition item 5 or 6
It will be nice for others if you can update this in your blog.
October 20, 2013 at 9:47 AM
Anand Vijay Kumar said...
Given it's 2013, Java Interviews has changed a lot with more focus on JVM
internals, Garbage Collection tuning and performance improvement. Here
is a list of questions, which I have faced recently in Java interviews :

1) What is Composite design pattern?
2) Explain Liskov substitution principle ?
3) Write a Java program to convert bytes to long?
4) What is false sharing in multithreading Java?
5) Can we make an array volatile in Java? What is effect of making it
volatile?
6) What is advantage and disadvantage of busy spin waiting strategy?
7) Difference between DOM and SAX parser in Java?
8) Write wait notify code for producer consumer problem?
9) Write code for thread-safe Singleton in Java?
10) What are 4 ways to iterate over Map in Java? Which one is best and
why?
11) Write code to remove elements from ArrayList while iterating?
12) is Swing thread-safe?
13) What is thread local variable in Java?
14) How do you convert an String to date in Java?
15) Can we use String in switch case?
16) What is constructor chaining in Java?
17) Explain Java Heap space and Garbage collection?
18) Difference between major and minor GC?
19) Difference between -Xmx and -Xms JVM option?
20) How to check if a String contains only numeric digits?
21) Difference between poll() and remove() method of Queue in Java?
22) Difference between Comparator and Comparable in Java?
23) Why you need to override hashcode, when you override equals in
Java?
24) How HashSet works internally in Java?
25) How do you print Array in Java?

All the best for your Java Interviews.
December 25, 2013 at 8:13 PM
Anonymous said...
Some exercises for an interview that I had with Morgan Stanley(in 2014):

1. Explain what 'path to root' means in the context of garbage collection.
What are roots?
2. Write code for a simple implementation of HashMap/Hashtable
3. Write a short program to illustrate the concept of deadlock
4. Explain why recursive implementation of QuickSort will require O(log
n) of additional space
5. Explain the design pattern used in Java and .NET io stream/reader
APIs.
6. Create an Iterator filtering framework: an IObjectTest interface with a
single boolean test(Object o) method and an Iterator sub-class which is
initialized with another Iterator and an IObjectTest instance. Your
iterator will then allow iteration over the original, but skipping any
objects which don't pass the test. Create a simple unit test for this
framework.
January 15, 2014 at 7:15 PM
Surendar said...
Hi,

The Answer to 3. question is wrong. When creating string using new will
create two copies one in heap and another in string pool. And the object
reference will be initially in heap. Inorder to make the object reference
to string pool we need to call intern() on the string.
February 19, 2014 at 2:00 AM
cbp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
March 22, 2014 at 7:17 AM
cbp said...
First of all, thank you so much for putting this page together. It is a great
starting point to refresh some concepts before going into an interview. I
would also recommend that everyone study the book 'Effective Java' too.
I wanted to bring up a point that JCIP discusses in Chapter 16.

"Double checked locking is an anti-pattern..." -Java Concurrency in
Practice p. 213

Yes, since Java 5 we can use the volatile keyword for the instance
variable and this fixes a rather fatal flaw (explained below), but the need
to use this ugly anit-pattern doesn't exist when you can just synchronize
the getInstance() method.

//ALL YOU NEED
public static synchronized getInstance() {
if (INSTANCE == null) {
//create instance
}
return INSTANCE;
}

"The real problem with DCL is the assumption that the worst thing that
can happen when reading a shared object reference without
synchronization is to erroneously see a stale value (in this case, null); in
that case the DCL idiom compensates for this risk by trying again with the
lock held. But the worst case is actually considerably worse - it is possible
to see a current value of the reference but stale values for the object's
state, meaning that the object could be seen to be in an invalid or
incorrect state." -Java Threads In Practice p. 214
March 22, 2014 at 8:19 AM
Anonymous said...
Method submit extends base method
Executor.execute(java.lang.Runnable) by creating and returning a Future
that can be used to cancel execution and/or wait for completion.
Methods invokeAny and invokeAll perform the most commonly useful
forms of bulk execution, executing a collection of tasks and then waiting
for at least one, or all, to complete. (Class ExecutorCompletionService
can be used to write customized variants of these methods.)
March 28, 2014 at 12:34 PM
Anonymous said...
Hi all
i have an interview in RAK bank for the post java developer..if anyone
know about the interview questions please help


Read more: http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2011/04/top-20-core-java-interview-
questions.html#ixzz3B6s8u8GW