What is the consequence of calling `parallel()` on a stream with a stateful intermediate operation like `sorted()`?

Question

Java Professional — Hard

What is the consequence of calling `parallel()` on a stream with a stateful intermediate operation like `sorted()`?

Accepted Answer

Calling `parallel()` on a stream with a stateful operation like `sorted()` forces the stream to collect all elements to determine order before proceeding. This can eliminate the benefits of parallelism, potentially making the execution slower than sequential.