Question

I’m coming from VB6 and I’m new to Java. In VB6, DoEvents gives up the processor and allows it to process other threads. Is there a similar thing in Java? How do I use it?

Answer 1

gives up the processor and allows it to process other threads.

Thread#yield() is the java counterpart to relinquish the control of the processors voluntarily.

From the javadoc for java.lang.Thread#yield():

A hint to the scheduler that the current thread is willing to yield its current use of a processor. The scheduler is free to ignore this hint.
Yield is a heuristic attempt to improve relative progression between threads that would otherwise over-utilise a CPU. Its use should be combined with detailed profiling and benchmarking to ensure that it actually has the desired effect.

It is rarely appropriate to use this method. It may be useful for debugging or testing purposes, where it may help to reproduce bugs due to race conditions. It may also be useful when designing concurrency control constructs such as the ones in the java.util.concurrent.locks package.

Note:
In case of Java based desktop UI frameworks like Swing, RIM’s UI application, there are ways to modify the UI using invokeLater() type of semantics.