Lists, HashMap, HashSet, and TreeSet

Key components of the Java Collections Framework

We learned earlier that the Java Collections Framework has three key components that work together. The first is the interface.

The second is implementation, meaning classes that implement interfaces. We get objects from those classes on which algorithmic operations are performed.

The third and final is the algorithm. This is the final goal because algorithms in the Java Collections Framework are methods that perform useful computations, such as sorting, searching, shuffling, etc. Algorithms are polymorphic, which means the same method can be used by an Iterator object and a ListIterator object.