How to write Thread-Safe Code in Java

thread-safety or thread-safe code in Java refers to code which can safely be used or shared in concurrent or multi-threading environment and they will behave as expected. any code, class, or object which can behave differently from its contract on the concurrent environment is not thread-safe. thread-safety is one of the risks introduced by using threads in Java and I have seen java programmers and developers struggling to write thread-safe code or just understanding what is thread-safe code and what is not?

Difference between a Thread and an Executor in Java

Even though both Thread and Executor, both are used to execute some code in parallel, there are some key differences between them. The main difference between a Thread and an Executor in Java is that it later provides a thread pool in Java. Along with several concurrency utilities like CountDownLatch, CyclicBarrier, Semaphore, FutureTask, Callable interface, and Conditions, JDK 5 also introduced a built-in thread pool, which provides a set of working threads to run your code in parallel. Since creating, starting, and running a thread is a time-consuming and expensive operation, many Java applications create a spool of thread at start-up and leverage that for executing the task in parallel until Java introduced the built-in thread pool.

Difference between Executor Framework and Fork Join Pool in Java?

Java 5 added Executor Framework to provide an out-of-box thread pool to Java programmers and Java 7 added ForkJoinPool an implementation of ExecutorService which specifically designed to execute ForkJoinTask. The Executor Framework provides several classes e.g. Executor, ExecutorService, and Executors for execution and creating thread pools. It also provides several built-in, ready to use thread pools like a pool of fixed threads, cached thread pool which can expand itself, spawn new threads if required due to heavy load.

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's 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.

How to Join Multiple Threads in Java? [Thread.join() Example]

Join method from the Thread class is an important method and used to impose order on the execution of multiple Threads. The concept of joining multiple threads is very popular in a multithreading interview question. Here is one such question, “You have three threads T1, T2, and T3, How do you ensure that they finish in order T1, T2, T3 ?. This question illustrates the power of the join method on multithreaded programming. Unlike classical thread questions like the difference between the wait and sleep method or solving the producer-consumer problem in Java, This one is a bit tricky.

Top 5 Difference Between Callable and Runnable Interface in Java

The difference between Callable and Runnable is one of the most frequently asked multi-threading and concurrency interview questions in the Java world. I remember it was 2007 when I first heard about the Callable interface and that too on a telephonic interview. Till then, I was happy using Runnable to implement threads and just started paying attention to Java 1.5, as most of the applications by then using Java 1.4. That one interview question encouraged me to learn more about several other useful features introduced in Java 5 concurrency library like CountDownLatch, CyclicBarrier, Semaphore, Atomic variables, and Thread pool. This is one of the reasons I always encourage Java developers to give/take regular interviews, just to update your knowledge.

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".

Difference between notify and notifyAll in Java - When and How to use

notify vs notifyAll in Java

What is the difference between notify and notifyAll method is one of the tricky Java questions, which is easy to answer but once the Interviewer asks follow-up questions, you either got confused or not able to provide clear-cut and to the point answers? The main difference between notify and notifyAll is that the notify method will only notify one Thread and the notifyAll method will notify all Threads which are waiting on that monitor or lock. By the way, this is something you have been reading all over places and to be frank,  this statement despite being correct is not complete, and it's very difficult to understand the difference between notify vs notifyAll by just reading this statement.

Inter Thread Communication in Java using Wait Notify Example

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.

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?

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.