The key thing was understanding how the java garbage collector worked.
Interview Answers
Anonymous
Aug 31, 2010
It scans the stack, looking for pointers into the heap. Any object in the heap with no pointer is unused.
Anonymous
Jun 4, 2012
I don't understand why allegedly brilliant programmers keep asking this question. There is no single way garbage collection works because the JVMS doesn't even require garbage collection. It's JVM dependent.