What should I learn to improve my Java skills ? [closed]

Question

I currently know Java SE and I want to learn something more 'enterprise'.

I would like something more distributed (app server, server programming, web, content management system ...) but any suggestion is ok.

There are many frameworks which I've heard: spring, hibernate, persistence, ejb, jsp, servlet, jsf, jboss, glassfish, ant etc etc etc etc. I'm very confused where to start.

So the question is: Can somebody explain to me what actually there frameworks are; and which one should I start with ?

Answer 1

I understand not knowing where to start. The answer is ANYWHERE. Just start. Don't worry about learning the best framework (as there usually isn't for any particular situation), but I would recommend some of the following technologies:

• Spring (it is a huge framework that covers many things and almost every company I know of doing Java work is using it in some fashion).
• JDBC (mostly just knowing how to make straight sql calls as there is unfortunately too much legacy code around that doesn't use an ORM tool and it is handy to understand it)
• Hibernate
• Unit testing and Mocking
• Ant/Maven

The list can go on, but the bottom line is don't get too caught up in the framework. Pick something and build a site with it.