Basic Level Questions:
1. What is the Java Collections Framework?
2. What are the main interfaces in the Java Collections Framework?
3. What is the difference between Collection and Collections?
4. What are the differences between List, Set, and Map?
5. Explain the differences between ArrayList and LinkedList.
6. What is the difference between HashSet and TreeSet?
7. What are the key differences between HashMap and TreeMap?
8. Why is HashSet faster than TreeSet?
9. What is the difference between Iterator and ListIterator?
10. What is the difference between fail-fast and fail-safe iterators?
Intermediate Level Questions:
11. How does HashMap work internally in Java?
12. How is the load factor used in HashMap?
13. What is hashing, and how does it help in HashMap?
14. What happens when the HashMap reaches its threshold?
15. Why should we use ConcurrentHashMap instead of HashMap in multithreading?
16. How does TreeSet maintain ordering?
17. Why does HashSet not allow duplicate values?
18. What is the difference between Comparable and Comparator?
19. What is a WeakHashMap, and how is it different from HashMap?
20. What is the difference between synchronized and concurrent collections?
21. What is CopyOnWriteArrayList, and where should it be used?
22. How does LinkedHashMap maintain insertion order?
23. What is IdentityHashMap? How is it different from HashMap?
24. What is EnumSet, and where is it used?
25. What are BlockingQueue and PriorityQueue?
Advanced Level Questions:
26. How does ConcurrentHashMap work internally?
27. How does a custom HashMap implementation work?
28. Why are HashMap keys immutable in best practices?
29. How do you synchronize a List, Set, and Map in Java?
30. How can you improve the performance of a HashMap?
31. What is a SoftReference and WeakReference in WeakHashMap?
32. What is the difference between NavigableMap and SortedMap?
33. Why is the initial capacity of HashMap set to a power of 2?
34. How does TreeMap internally sort elements?
35. What is the difference between ConcurrentSkipListMap and TreeMap?
36. How does the computeIfAbsent method work in HashMap?
37. What is the impact of resizing in HashMap performance?
38. How does a PriorityBlockingQueue work?
39. What is the difference between ArrayDeque and LinkedList as a queue?
40. How does a Deque work, and where is it used?
Scenario-Based and Coding Questions
41. Implement a custom HashMap.
42. Write a program to find duplicates in an ArrayList.
43. Design an LRU (Least Recently Used) cache using LinkedHashMap.
44. Write a program to sort a list of objects using Comparator.
45. Implement a thread-safe Singleton class using EnumSet.
46. Convert a HashMap into a TreeMap.
47. Merge two HashMaps without overwriting values.
48. Write a program to remove null values from a HashMap.
49. How to iterate over a ConcurrentHashMap safely in a multi-threaded environment?
50. Find the most frequently occurring element in a List.
Differences Between List, Set, and Map in Java
Feature List Set Map
Ordered collection of Unordered collection of Collection of key-value
Definition
elements unique elements pairs
Keys are unique, but
Duplicates Allows duplicate elements Does not allow duplicates
values can be duplicate
Does not guarantee order
No ordering in HashMap,
Maintains insertion order (HashSet), maintains sorted
sorted in TreeMap,
Ordering (e.g., ArrayList, order (TreeSet), maintains
maintains insertion order
LinkedList) insertion order
in LinkedHashMap
(LinkedHashSet)
Key-Value Stores data in (key, value)
N/A N/A
Structure pairs
Accessing Access via index Access via iteration Access via key
Elements
Feature List Set Map
(list.get(index)) (map.get(key))
When key-value
When you need an
When uniqueness is required, relationships are required,
Best Use Cases ordered collection, e.g., a
e.g., storing unique IDs e.g., dictionary-like
list of items
storage
HashMap,
Common ArrayList, HashSet, LinkedHashSet,
LinkedHashMap,
Implementations LinkedList, Vector TreeSet
TreeMap, Hashtable
