Hi guys, I used to do some Java programming but haven't really touched it much in at least 5 years (been doing C/Obj-C/Cocoa/Python development instead). But, I may have an opportunity a bit down the road at a great job doing Java development (you can translate "great" as "really high-paying" 
). I'm sure the landscape is much different now than the last time I was involved (back then JFC/Swing, applets, and EJB were considered "new", for example, and anything web-related was very primitive). Please excuse the long post, but here are some of the questions I have:
1. What's a good general IDE to use for Java development nowadays? Even though I'll use my Mac whenever I can, I'd probably want to stick with something cross-platform and industry-standard, such as Elipse or NetBeans. Are those tools still the most common? Are they any good or out of date? Are there newer, better tools I should look at? Whichever IDE I use would need to be able to handle many different Java-related things, including XML, localization, different deployment options, etc. Also, which ones perform best on a Mac?
2. Is Ant still relevant for building Java apps? It's what I used to use but I don't know if there are better methods to use now.
3. What ancillary technologies should I be looking at learning for general, modern web-based development? The myriad of options available now are staggering and bewildering. Some things I've seen include XML, XML-RPC, SOAP, XSLT, SAX, JSF, UDDI, WSDL, Spring, Ajax, etc. There are so many I don't even know where to start or which ones I should be learning. It seems Ajax will be a must (although I understand that requires using a lot of Javascript...yuck), but what else, bearing in mind I may be eventually developing or at least interacting with enterprise business objects)? In the past I have used JSP, Servlets, and Struts and hated every bloody second of it...it really was not fun at all and seemed like a very kludgy solution to web-enabling Java. Hopefully there are newer, better frameworks and technologies that are being used?
4. What are the best resources for brushing up on my Java and all the related technologies? I feel like I still have all the basics in my head somewhere but I need to start myself off gently again to make it all come back. What books do you like? What websites are the most helpful?
Thanks for reading!
). I'm sure the landscape is much different now than the last time I was involved (back then JFC/Swing, applets, and EJB were considered "new", for example, and anything web-related was very primitive). Please excuse the long post, but here are some of the questions I have:1. What's a good general IDE to use for Java development nowadays? Even though I'll use my Mac whenever I can, I'd probably want to stick with something cross-platform and industry-standard, such as Elipse or NetBeans. Are those tools still the most common? Are they any good or out of date? Are there newer, better tools I should look at? Whichever IDE I use would need to be able to handle many different Java-related things, including XML, localization, different deployment options, etc. Also, which ones perform best on a Mac?
2. Is Ant still relevant for building Java apps? It's what I used to use but I don't know if there are better methods to use now.
3. What ancillary technologies should I be looking at learning for general, modern web-based development? The myriad of options available now are staggering and bewildering. Some things I've seen include XML, XML-RPC, SOAP, XSLT, SAX, JSF, UDDI, WSDL, Spring, Ajax, etc. There are so many I don't even know where to start or which ones I should be learning. It seems Ajax will be a must (although I understand that requires using a lot of Javascript...yuck), but what else, bearing in mind I may be eventually developing or at least interacting with enterprise business objects)? In the past I have used JSP, Servlets, and Struts and hated every bloody second of it...it really was not fun at all and seemed like a very kludgy solution to web-enabling Java. Hopefully there are newer, better frameworks and technologies that are being used?
4. What are the best resources for brushing up on my Java and all the related technologies? I feel like I still have all the basics in my head somewhere but I need to start myself off gently again to make it all come back. What books do you like? What websites are the most helpful?
Thanks for reading!
