Hello again! This lesson's topic is Sorted Maps. Similar to other map structures, Sorted Maps store key-value pairs but in an ordered manner. Learning about Sorted Maps enriches our set of tools for organized and efficient data manipulation. Today's goal is to work with Sorted Maps using Java's TreeMap class.

In Java, we differentiate between regular maps like HashMap and Sorted Maps. Comparing HashMap to TreeMap is akin to comparing a messy bookshelf to a well-organized library — the latter maintains order. HashMap does not guarantee any order of keys, whereas TreeMap sorts the keys in natural order (if they implement the Comparable interface) or according to a specified comparator.

The TreeMap class is part of the Java Collections Framework and provides a Red-Black tree-based implementation of the NavigableMap interface. This ensures that the map is always sorted according to the natural ordering of its keys or by a custom comparator.