Question

To understand the working of counting semaphores, i decided to implement a simple version.
I wanted to verify my current implementation is in fact a correct implementation and i havent missed anything obvious

public class CountingSemaphore {
    private int limit;

    public CountingSemaphore(int limit) {
        this.limit = limit;
    }

    public synchronized void acquire() {
        try {
            if (limit == 0)
                wait();

            limit--;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public synchronized void release() {
        try {
            if(limit == 0) 
                notifyAll();

            limit++;
        }catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}

Answer 1

This should work except for one detail.
Since you use notifyAll(), (and as @JBNizet points out, due to the risk of spurious wakeups,) you can wake up several waiting threads, all of which will be freed and decrease limit.
Change

if (limit == 0)
    wait();

to

while (limit == 0) {
    wait();
}

and you should be fine.