Is it necessary to learn all APIs?

Question

Hi, I want to learn Java EE but I don't know where to start. Someone told me that it is better to start with APIs. Please help.

Answer 1

You should always start with examples, unless you're proficient enough to start right ahead with the API.

I suggest you start with some easy step-by-step examples, and then continue on to dealing with the API and more advanced functions.

Answer 2

It is impossible to learn all APIs. What is important is to learn where to look for samples and documentation.

Answer 3

After 10 years of Java EE, there are still some API's I never used. So no you don't need to learn all API.

As Yossi, said, start with concrete examples to get your job done, if you need some specific api for your job, learn and use it.

Anyway, the time you learn all api's, most of them will be out dated:) ...even though the considerate time the experts needs to specify the specs:)

and don't forget, knowing by hard all words from the dictionary won't make of you a great writer!

Answer 4

Learning all about API is impossible, but keep a local copy of the API.

Sun's EE Totutorial is a good starting point to study Java EE

Answer 5

No, it's unnecessary and impossible to learn all the APIs out there.

Just learn the APIs that you find interesting and are directly relevant to what you want to do and go from there. If you try to learn many APIs at once, chances are you won't be very good at most of them.

Answer 6

If you want to learn JEE the best way in my opinion is to think of an application a simple application , try to gather information about the API required to develop such application , this is the learning curve i practice to learn any new framework or programming language

Since you are beginner i would like to suggest these books for your learning which will be helpful

Head First Servlets and JSP

Java Server Programming Black Book

Hope this helps !

Answer 7

I want to learn Java EE but I don't know where to start.

Strictly speaking from Java EE APIs, I'd suggest to start with JSP/Servlet, JPA, EJB 3.0, JAX-WS and then maybe JMS, JTA (and once you'll have reached this point, I think that you'll be skilled enough to learn any other API if required).

While possible, learning all APIs doesn't seem to be a realistic and smart goal and mastering them all would take a huge amount of time. Actually, your capacity to learn new things and to find solutions to solve problem is more valuable in my opinion.

So, no, it's not necessary to learn all APIs but knowing the most commonly used is certainly a good thing.

Answer 8

JEE is a very complex domain, there's many differnt ways to write an JEE app. I suggest first starting with the Sun JEE tutorial to get a feel for what's in the specification.

I would reccomend that you decide on what software stack you want to work with. I'm partial to Spring but there's also (of the top of my head) Seam, Wicket, Struts2.

Once settled on a stack get some books on the subject. Googling around you can find great blog posts/tutorials but they usually focus on a narrow subject where a book would give you the greater picture.

A suggestion for a stack would be Spring/Spring-MVC/JPA/Hibernate and deploy on Tomcat if you don't need a full Application Server.

Answer 9

learning API out of nothing does not make sense and is also highly ineffective. regarding learning effect you always need to have a context to apply APIs. feedback is essential!

otherwise you will waste a lot of time.