Getting back up to speed on Java after 8-10 years

Question

The last time I did any serious Java coding was back around the turn of the century. In the mean time I've been doing a lot of other stuff, most recently c (embedded stuff) and c++. I'm starting on a new assignment in a couple of months and it will most likely be all-Java-all-the-time. I don't much info other than that I will be dealing with JBoss for some applications.

So, I would like some suggestions on books/site/whatever to at a minimum get me buzzword-compliant and hopefully give me a good handle on the state-of-the-art in the world of Java.

Thanks, Cesar

Answer 1

I was in a similar situation a year ago, and this book was the most useful: JBoss At Work. You will start from a simple web page, and then build toward a WebService with JPA, JMS, JTA, EJB etc. So you really code instead of just read -- it helped me to get to speed very quickly. Highly recommendable.

The only downside is that AFAIK, there have been no 2nd edition, and a lot has changed since then... But I still recommend it.

For changes in JavaSE (particularly those new things since Java5), Effective Java 2nd Edition. Period.

Answer 2

An overview of jboss related projects you find here: http://www.jboss.org/projects/matrix

I'm afraid that you will be buried in information. You should find out what technologies are used for your assignment. I would suggest a roadmap like that:

Presentation Layer

• JSF and Richfaces (which includes Ajax4jsf)
• JSP
• Seam

Business Layer

• EJB (Message Queues,TimerBeans as well as annotations have been added)
• Webservices JAX-WS, XML-Binding JAXB
• Java Connector Architecture (JCA)
• Rule Engines

Persistance

• Hibernate is commonly used as an implementation of JPA

JbossCache could also be important if it's about performance

Build System

• ant
• maven

Testing Frameworks

SOA would be a another complex topic

Hope this helps