Java is immunne some of the Stack and Heap? overwriting issues that arise in languages such as AssemblyLanguage, C and C++ and described on the excellent AdvancedDebuggingHints page. There are, however, a different set of common issues that arise:
All Java GUI programs are MultiThreaded, with at least a thread for each window, a thread for the GarbageCollection, a main thread, as well as those explicitly started. Testing such programs is non-trivial. Typically the solution is to have data accessed through accessors (small methods / functions which get or set data values) and have these accessors perform locking on the data. Most JVMs output significant information when a deadlock occurs and this can enable debugging.
Java uses Unicode throughout and bad habits learnt with ASCII, and which work for English Unicode, break completely when you encountered real Unicode. Generally any single quoted characters ('c') need to be looked at very closely.
GarbageCollection systems and algorithms can have bugs, but the systems in most JVMs are mature and stable. Unless you're doing incredible numbers of calls to JNI? code, the bug is almost certainly in your code. Several of the JVMs provide memory Profiling which appears to be useful in a significant number of non-pathological cases.
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