HashMap

Implement the map using a hash table. To calculate the hashes of the keys, use the .hashCode() function every single descendant of Object class will have it defined. Use a separate chaining technique to resolve collisions. Each one of the buckets will therefore hold a LinkedMap object (using what you wrote above). Define a constant called MAX_LOAD_FACTOR and use it to determine when the bucket array should be grown. The size of this bucket array does not have to be prime, but make sure that it grows whenever the load factor (i.e. # of items / # of buckets) exceeds MAX_LOAD_FACTOR this means that the load factor will have to be checked upon every insertion into the map.