On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 11:30:16AM -0500, rob caSSon wrote: > i'm just starting out, but want to make things as smooth/organized as > possible....are others doing this kind of development? are you using > build scripts with ant? are you using an IDE like eclipse? if so, > what plugins do you suggest? any good opensoure projects you've used as > models/code-exploration? We use Java servlet technology here at Follett heavily. In my particular group we use Tomcat as our container, and rely entirey on Ant for doing builds. We all use different editors (I use vim), but it would be kinda nice if we all used Eclipse :) Here are some fun things to explore when programming in Java (for the web and otherwise): - JSP (Java Server Pages) a PHP like templating language for Servlets - JSF (Java Server Faces) a GUI framework for Servlets - Object-Relational-Mapping tools for abstracting database relational interactions. ORM tools essentially makes tables into Java classes, and your rows into Java objects. There are several options for ORM in Java (Hibernate, Cayenne, Apache's Object Relational Bridge, and more). Hibernate is probably the most widely used. - Memory caching frameworks for really fast applications: Perst, db4o, prevayler. - Lightweight containers such as Spring for assembling your classes into applications. - Apache's Lucene for indexing text and just about anything you might want to index. The language and the SDK itself are formidable in themselves. I've found my copy of the Java Cookbook from O'Reilly to be a great resource for finding entry points into the javadoc. Joshua Bloch's Effective Java is also a valuable slim books on the dos/don'ts of programming in Java. Also, create an account on unalog [http://www.unalog.com] since some of programmer types in libraries use it to share links to articles software packages. A nice way to keep up to date with what's going on. The journey of thousand miles starts with one step, so just writing a simple application is the best way to learn a new language. Good luck! //Ed -- Ed Summers aim: inkdroid web: http://www.inkdroid.org The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. [Yeats]