What are the main tools/frameworks used nowadays in Java?

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+2 Q:

What are the main tools/frameworks used nowadays in Java?

I am a .NET / C++ programmer switching to Java. I had previous exposure to Java 10+ years ago in university.

What would be the typical things to be learned in order to be able to program web applications in Java?

I can think of: JSP/Servlets Eclipse EJB

What else do people use these days?

The idea would be to be able to land on a Java project and make myself useful

+10 A:

Hibernate and Spring

willcodejavaforfood 2009-05-13 12:58:41

Personally, I'd avoid Hibernate unless you *know* you need it for some reason. It's a monster dependency, full of magic, and difficult to control if perf is a concern. I've spent considerable time banging my head against it and removing it from code where it shouldn't have been used. Stick with vanilla JDBC; at least you'll know what your code is doing.

overthink 2009-05-13 16:09:01

Then I am afraid you will need hibernate since that is what projects use nowadays. IF it is a good framework or not was not the question here.

willcodejavaforfood 2009-05-13 19:44:07

Hibernate is used on a lot of Java web applications whether or not it is actually used the way it should be used. I agree with overthink's comment - Hibernate can cause a lot of issues, more than if you just used JDBC directly. However, I'd like to add that if you're using Spring, you *shouldn't* be using JDBC directly - Spring's JDBCTemplate (or advanced subclasses if using Java 5+) should be used instead, as it handles exceptions in a much more meaningful way.

MetroidFan2002 2009-05-14 14:52:25

+5 A:

Tools department: Eclipse and Netbeans

(For web-centric Java development, see the Eclipse based Aptana IDE)

gimel 2009-05-13 12:59:56

...or, if you want something better (and are willing to pay for it), IntelliJ IDEA ;-)

Jonik 2009-05-13 13:07:40

people complain all the time about Eclipse, but it's still a strong reference.If you want to hack some Google Android or Blackberry Apps, SDKs are available for the Eclipse platform.

Brian Clozel 2009-05-13 13:20:45

+5 A:

I migrate between a lot of clients who use Java heavily. Here's what I see people use:

a) a lot:

JDBC
Servlets
Ant
Log4J
Eclipse/Intellij

b) quite often:

JSP
Spring
Maven
Web Services
the Apache Commons libraries

c) barely ever:

EJBs (not since 2002 or so!).

I've not come across Hibernate or other ORMs. I'm not sure why, I confess, since it seems popular in the context of SO.

Brian Agnew 2009-05-13 13:06:58

+1, seems quite realistic to me. (Although personally I haven't used JDBC directly for ages; database access is hidden behind Hibernate.)

Jonik 2009-05-13 13:38:39

Maybe you should start recommending Hibernate to your clients. I can't even imagine writing a J2EE app without it these days.

Peter D 2009-05-13 13:47:17

The above reflects what I find, not what I recommend.

Brian Agnew 2009-05-13 14:49:00

+2 A:

If you are focusing on web applications specifically, it's important to know and understand many topics that are independent of Java:

JavaScript
SQL
CSS
XML (XPath in particular)
HTML
HTTP

You need to get a grasp of these concepts before learning Java frameworks that may or may not simplify the creation of code dealing with them.

As far as Java-specific libraries and frameworks go, these are essential:

Servlets and JSPs
JDBC
Ant
Apache Commons -- for the love of all that's good, don't re-invent common libraries!

These are nice to have but are too narrow to focus on before learning everything above:

Spring
Hibernate
Maven
JSF

Steven Huwig 2009-05-13 13:15:44

+1 for XPath. I've seen many a buggy 'indexOf' search in an XML string, where an xpath would have been much cleaner!

toolkit 2009-05-13 13:34:54

+1 A:

Presentation:

Presentation Frameworks:

Dependency Injection (and more):

Spring

Database:

And maybe:

Tomcat

toolkit 2009-05-13 13:16:10

The Apache Foundation has done some great things:

Web service development made easy - Apache CXF
For java web applications, you can take JSP to the next level with Apache Tapestry
For project management (build process, quality control, migration...), Maven will do the work
ActiveMQ is a good choince if you need to implement a JMS service.

No need to rush and read tons of books about these, they pretty much use common concepts you probably encoutered in your previous experiences.

Brian Clozel 2009-05-13 13:16:39

Grails is also a Java platform web application framework, although it's coded in the Groovy language rather than Java, which is more like Python or Ruby and is dynamically typed.

Andrew Noyes 2009-05-13 15:58:02

ansaurus

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What are the main tools/frameworks used nowadays in Java?

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