What are the benefits of the Java collection framework?

Collection framework provides flexibility, performance, and robustness.

• 􀂃Polymorphic algorithms – sorting, shuffling, reversing, binary search etc.
  
• Set algebra - such as finding subsets, intersections, and unions between objects.
• Performance - collections have much better performance compared to the older Vector and Hashtable classes with the elimination of synchronization overheads.
• Thread-safety - when synchronization is required, wrapper implementations are provided for temporarily synchronizing existing collection objects.
• Immutability - when immutability is required wrapper implementations are provided for making a collection immutable.
• Extensibility - interfaces and abstract classes provide an excellent starting point for adding functionality and features to create specialized object collections.