我相信面试官想要了解的可能是界面和实现之间的区别。

代码模块的接口——不是Java接口，更通用的说法是“接口”——基本上是与使用该接口的客户端代码之间的契约。

代码模块的实现是使模块工作的内部代码。通常，您可以以多种不同的方式实现特定的接口，甚至可以在客户机代码不知道更改的情况下更改实现。

A Java interface should only be used as an interface in the above generic sense, to define how the class behaves for the benefit of client code using the class, without specifying any implementation. Thus, an interface includes method signatures - the names, return types, and argument lists - for methods expected to be called by client code, and in principle should have plenty of Javadoc for each method describing what that method does. The most compelling reason for using an interface is if you plan to have multiple different implementations of the interface, perhaps selecting an implementation depending on deployment configuration.

A Java abstract class, in contrast, provides a partial implementation of the class, rather than having a primary purpose of specifying an interface. It should be used when multiple classes share code, but when the subclasses are also expected to provide part of the implementation. This permits the shared code to appear in only one place - the abstract class - while making it clear that parts of the implementation are not present in the abstract class and are expected to be provided by subclasses.

Many junior developers make the mistake of thinking of interfaces, abstract and concrete classes as slight variations of the same thing, and choose one of them purely on technical grounds: Do I need multiple inheritance? Do I need some place to put common methods? Do I need to bother with something other than just a concrete class? This is wrong, and hidden in these questions is the main problem: "I". When you write code for yourself, by yourself, you rarely think of other present or future developers working on or with your code.

接口和抽象类，虽然从技术的角度来看很相似，但它们的含义和目的完全不同。

总结

接口定义了一个契约，由某个实现为您实现。 抽象类提供了您的实现可以重用的默认行为。

以上两点正是我在面试时所寻求的，并且是一个足够紧凑的总结。阅读更多细节。

替代的总结

接口用于定义公共api 抽象类用于内部使用和定义spi

通过例子

To put it differently: A concrete class does the actual work, in a very specific way. For example, an ArrayList uses a contiguous area of memory to store a list of objects in a compact manner which offers fast random access, iteration, and in-place changes, but is terrible at insertions, deletions, and occasionally even additions; meanwhile, a LinkedList uses double-linked nodes to store a list of objects, which instead offers fast iteration, in-place changes, and insertion/deletion/addition, but is terrible at random access. These two types of lists are optimized for different use cases, and it matters a lot how you're going to use them. When you're trying to squeeze performance out of a list that you're heavily interacting with, and when picking the type of list is up to you, you should carefully pick which one you're instantiating.

On the other hand, high level users of a list don't really care how it is actually implemented, and they should be insulated from these details. Let's imagine that Java didn't expose the List interface, but only had a concrete List class that's actually what LinkedList is right now. All Java developers would have tailored their code to fit the implementation details: avoid random access, add a cache to speed up access, or just reimplement ArrayList on their own, although it would be incompatible with all the other code that actually works with List only. That would be terrible... But now imagine that the Java masters actually realize that a linked list is terrible for most actual use cases, and decided to switch over to an array list for their only List class available. This would affect the performance of every Java program in the world, and people wouldn't be happy about it. And the main culprit is that implementation details were available, and the developers assumed that those details are a permanent contract that they can rely on. This is why it's important to hide implementation details, and only define an abstract contract. This is the purpose of an interface: define what kind of input a method accepts, and what kind of output is expected, without exposing all the guts that would tempt programmers to tweak their code to fit the internal details that might change with any future update.

抽象类介于接口和具体类之间。它应该帮助实现共享常见或无聊的代码。例如，AbstractCollection提供了基于大小为0的isEmpty的基本实现，contains作为迭代和比较，addAll作为重复添加，等等。这使得实现将重点放在区分它们的关键部分:如何实际存储和检索数据。

另一个角度:api与spi

接口是代码不同部分之间的低内聚网关。它们允许库的存在和发展，而不会在内部发生变化时影响到每个库的用户。它被称为应用程序编程接口，而不是应用程序编程类。在较小的规模上，它们还允许多个开发人员在大型项目上成功协作，通过良好的文档接口分离不同的模块。

抽象类是在实现接口时使用的高内聚帮助器，假设有某种级别的实现细节。或者，抽象类用于定义服务提供者接口(spi)。

API和SPI之间的区别很微妙，但很重要:对于API，重点在于谁使用它，而对于SPI，重点在于谁实现它。

Adding methods to an API is easy, all existing users of the API will still compile. Adding methods to an SPI is hard, since every service provider (concrete implementation) will have to implement the new methods. If interfaces are used to define an SPI, a provider will have to release a new version whenever the SPI contract changes. If abstract classes are used instead, new methods could either be defined in terms of existing abstract methods, or as empty throw not implemented exception stubs, which will at least allow an older version of a service implementation to still compile and run.

关于Java 8和默认方法的说明

尽管Java 8为接口引入了默认方法，这使得接口和抽象类之间的界限更加模糊，但这并不是为了实现可以重用代码，而是为了更容易地更改既作为API又作为SPI(或者被错误地用于定义SPI而不是抽象类)的接口。

“书本知识”

OP回答中提供的技术细节被认为是“书本知识”，因为这通常是在学校和大多数关于语言的技术书籍中使用的方法:一个东西是什么，而不是如何在实践中使用它，特别是在大规模应用中。

打个比方:假设问题是:

舞会之夜租什么更好，一辆车还是一间酒店房间?

技术上的答案是这样的:

嗯，在车里你可以做得更快，但在酒店房间里你可以做得更舒服。另一方面，酒店房间只在一个地方，而在汽车里你可以在更多的地方这样做，比如，你可以去远景点看风景，或者在汽车电影院，或者很多其他地方，甚至不止一个地方。而且，酒店房间里有淋浴。

这都是真的，但完全忽略了一点，那就是它们是两种完全不同的东西，两者都可以同时用于不同的目的，“做”方面并不是这两种选择中最重要的事情。这个答案缺乏视角，它显示了一种不成熟的思维方式，而正确地呈现了真实的“事实”。

你很好地总结了使用和实现方面的实际差异，但没有提到意义上的差异。

接口是实现类将具有的行为的描述。实现类确保它将拥有这些可以在其上使用的方法。它基本上是类必须做出的契约或承诺。

抽象类是不同子类的基础，这些子类共享不需要重复创建的行为。子类必须完成行为，并有覆盖预定义行为的选项(只要它没有被定义为final或private)。

你会在java中找到很好的例子。util包，它包含了List这样的接口和AbstractList这样已经实现了接口的抽象类。官方文档对AbstractList的描述如下:

该类提供了List接口的框架实现，以最大限度地减少实现该接口所需的工作，该接口由“随机访问”数据存储(例如数组)支持。

我先给大家举个例子:

public interface LoginAuth{
   public String encryptPassword(String pass);
   public void checkDBforUser();
}

假设您的应用程序中有3个数据库。然后，该数据库的每个实现都需要定义上述2个方法:

public class DBMySQL implements LoginAuth{
          // Needs to implement both methods
}
public class DBOracle implements LoginAuth{
          // Needs to implement both methods
}
public class DBAbc implements LoginAuth{
          // Needs to implement both methods
}

但是，如果encryptPassword()不依赖于数据库，并且对每个类都是相同的呢?那么上面的方法就不是一个好的方法。

相反，考虑以下方法:

public abstract class LoginAuth{
   public String encryptPassword(String pass){
            // Implement the same default behavior here 
            // that is shared by all subclasses.
   }

   // Each subclass needs to provide their own implementation of this only:
   public abstract void checkDBforUser();
}

现在，在每个子类中，我们只需要实现一个方法——依赖于数据库的方法。

这里似乎已经涵盖了几乎所有的东西。在抽象类的实际实现上再补充一点:

Abstract关键字也用于防止类被实例化。如果你有一个具体的类，你不想被实例化-让它抽象。

当我试图在两个密切相关的类之间共享行为时，我创建了一个包含公共行为的抽象类，并作为两个类的父类。

当我试图定义Type(对象的用户可以可靠地调用的方法列表)时，我创建了一个接口。

例如，我绝不会创建一个只有一个具体子类的抽象类，因为抽象类是关于共享行为的。但是我很可能创建一个只有一个实现的接口。我的代码的用户不会知道只有一个实现。实际上，在未来的版本中可能会有几个实现，它们都是一些新的抽象类的子类，这些抽象类在我创建接口时甚至还不存在。

这似乎也有点太书生气了(尽管我在记忆中从未见过这样的说法)。如果面试官(或OP)真的想要更多关于这方面的个人经验，我早就准备好了关于界面是出于必要而进化的轶事，反之亦然。

One more thing. Java 8 now allows you to put default code into an interface, further blurring the line between interfaces and abstract classes. But from what I have seen, that feature is overused even by the makers of the Java core libraries. That feature was added, and rightly so, to make it possible to extend an interface without creating binary incompatibility. But if you are making a brand new Type by defining an interface, then the interface should be JUST an interface. If you want to also provide common code, then by all means make a helper class (abstract or concrete). Don't be cluttering your interface from the start with functionality that you may want to change.