One of the reasons I asked was that it did look very much like a version of a question I used to have. I think I changed the text to read "is the same as" rather than equivalent to. The problem is that I have about 800 odd questions in various pages and databases and it gets hard to trace them. Of course I often see question "by other people" that look very very similar to mine. This is why some of my questions have some very odd variable names in them that match up to various people, places, cats, dogs I have known
....
But to give an analogy that illustrates the point behind the question.
Windows 3.x supported multi tasking but not multi threading. You could have multiple tasks or programs running but it did not support multiple paths of execution within one program. This was one of the reasons why it would have been very difficult to port
Java to windows 3.x. I don't think you will get that type of overall conceptual question on the exam, but if you understand that concept then you will be more likely to understand the questions that do come up.
One other important feature of threading vs multi tasking is that threads can directly share data whereas multiple executing programs do not directly have access to each others data.
The
SCJP exam does like to test you knowlege of Threading, and it is a fairly difficult topic so write plenty of practice code. Note that some Thread behaviour is "non deterministic", meaning you cannot know for certain what will happen, even if the same sequence of events run on 100 times on your machine it might not give the same result on attempt 101. So this is one area where it is very, very important to understand the ideas behind the code.
Marcus