vk02720 said:
What will be a good combination of Java and related
tools/technologies/frameworks to learn and master that will last
atleast another 5 years or so ?
It would be difficult to find a skill set that won't last for at least
the next five years. Java is used all over the place. The only really
risky market is J2ME, but even that is pretty secure. Certainly web
application development and EJBs will be around and quite popular for
some years to come, even if you believe they are seeing the beginning of
the end.
Five years is really a rather short period of time, in the end.
As someone starting out in Java, it is confusing to pick what to learn
- Java 1.4, 1.5, and/or Struts/Spring/WebWorks/Tapestry ....
IntelliJ/Eclipse/Netbeans.....
In terms of where these things are in their popularity curve, I'd skip
Struts, since the major developers have pretty much decided that JSF is
good enough to make obsolete the original Struts framework, and have
moved on to trying to improve on JSF. I'd learn JSF. Spring is
popular, though I can't understand why, and Tapestry had a good name at
least a year ago, but I haven't hear dmuch since (that may be
coincidence, though, as I don't follow a lot of the "trendy" kinds of
Java pundits too awfully much.) I don't hear much about WebWorks.
To add to your list, now would be a good time to build experience with
EJB 3.0. The next version of the EJB spec will be a radical chance from
all previous versions. It's not released yet, but that means you're not
competing with years of experience. If you can point to significant
projects that you've completed with pre-releases of EJB 3, you may be
able to make yourself a hot commodity for a few years just on that
basis.
Eclipse is, in my experience, by far the most popular development
environment. Getting the features you want can be a bit of a balancing
act between a dozen vendors, though, so if that bothers you then you may
want to pay for IntelliJ or check out NetBeans. Both are somewhat
widely used.
Those are my first impressions. I probably missed something, but I'm
sure you'll get other responses as well.
