Interview Question

Threads and Runnables

Java supports Threads since JDK 1.0. Before starting a new thread you have to specify the code to be executed by this thread, often called the task. This is done by implementing Runnable - a functional interface defining a single void no-args method run() as demonstrated in the following example:

Runnable task = () -> {
    String threadName = Thread.currentThread().getName();
    System.out.println("Hello " + threadName);
};

task.run();

Thread thread = new Thread(task);
thread.start();

System.out.println("Done!");

Executors

The Concurrency API introduces the concept of an ExecutorService as a higher level replacement for working with threads directly. Executors are capable of running asynchronous tasks and typically manage a pool of threads, so we don't have to create new threads manually. All threads of the internal pool will be reused under the hood for revenant tasks, so we can run as many concurrent tasks as we want throughout the life-cycle of our application with a single executor service

ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
executor.submit(() -> {
    String threadName = Thread.currentThread().getName();
    System.out.println("Hello " + threadName);
});

Multithreading

Threads can be created by using two mechanisms :

1. Extending the Thread class
2. Implementing the Runnable Interface

Thread Class vs Runnable Interface

1. If we extend the Thread class, our class cannot extend any other class because Java doesn’t support multiple inheritance. But, if we implement the Runnable interface, our class can still extend other base classes.

2. We can achieve basic functionality of a thread by extending Thread class because it provides some inbuilt methods like yield(), interrupt() etc. that are not available in Runnable interface.