Most modern languages support many of the data types we’ve looked at so far this term, including Stacks, Queues, Hash Maps/Dictionaries, and more.

Many of these are supported within the language itself, often through a utility package, or something similar which can be imported, or from a third party library that can be imported. Which method depends upon what language and what data type you are considering.

Java is no different, and supports Stacks, Queues, Sets, and more. They will often be found in a family of related data structures and implement the Collection interface.

The nice thing about them being a part of the language, is that you don’t have to worry about the implementation. So why did we learn about implementing them – because it helps us understand when to pick the right data structure type, as well as knowing when and how create that structure in case it isn’t supported in the language we are using.

It’s one thing to be able to use a data structure given to you, it’s quite another to be able to develop and modify a data structure to meet your specific needs.

Built in Java Classes was originally found on Access 2 Learn

Assistant Professor

Walter Wimberly is an Assistant Professor at a regional college in Tennessee, teaching Computer Science in the Software Engineering track. He works as a student advisor, oversees curriculum changes, develops new courses, and manages the advisory panel.
Walter taught full time for about 7 years, before going back into “industry” as a full stack Software Developer for a dozen years. There he focused on web based projects coding in JavaScript/jQuery and utilizing the Bootstrap CSS Framework on the front-end, and coding in PHP, ASP/ASP.Net, SQL on the back-end.

Since he loves teaching, he taught as an adjunct web and digital media classes for eight (8) years, while working in industry, and has since returned to teaching full time.

He has been married for over 25 years, and is father to several special needs boys. As such, he is working on some projects to help others who have special needs to be self-sufficient, and support the care givers of those with special needs. Check out his Autism blog for more info.

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