Member Avatar for hapax

I want to learn Java web development. What should I study first?

JSP, servlets, and JDBC?

Or should I jump right into learning to use environments like Struts, JSF, Spring, Hibernate? Which of these would you recommend, if so?

(I'm from an ASP.NET/C# background, but I want to start learning Java web development. I'm mostly interested in back end development.)

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by stultuske

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Short answer for : learn the platform fundamentals first, then the frameworks. That echoes and builds on ’s point about databases — but adds a modern, hands‑on road map and current tooling so effort spent now stays useful.

Start with core Java (language, collections, exceptions, concurrency and the JDK toolchain). Pair that with HTTP basics so the request/response model is second nature. Next, study the servlet lifecycle and deploy a tiny servlet to Tomcat or an embedded container to see how requests, sessions, filters and dispatching work; the servlet layer is what frameworks sit on (see Jakarta EE at https://jakarta.ee/). Learn raw JDBC so SQL and transactions are clear (Oracle JDBC tutorial: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jdbc/). After you understand raw access, learn JPA and an ORM such as Hibernate to see how it simplifies persistence (https://hibernate.org/orm/documentation/).

Once the fundamentals are comfortable, pick a modern stack for productive backend work: Spring Boot + Spring MVC + Spring Data JPA is a practical choice (guides at https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/). Use a server-side template engine such as Thymeleaf (https://www.thymeleaf.org/) or expose JSON REST endpoints for a JavaScript frontend. Practice: build a small CRUD REST service, test it with Postman, add integration tests, and package it with Maven/Gradle.

Tools and habits: use an IDE (IntelliJ IDEA Community), Maven or Gradle, Git, and write tests (JUnit). Avoid learning heavyweight frameworks before the basics; also note JSP and older stacks (Struts, EJB 2) are largely legacy—learn them only for maintenance work. For deployment and container behavior, the Apache Tomcat docs are useful: https://tomcat.apache.org/.

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Member Avatar for palavi

yes JSP and servlets u must read and jdbc is for database connection, JSp for front end and servelts for responding to the requests.Structs is a framework which makes easy i dont have idea about Hibernet which is in boom today so check abt dat..

Member Avatar for stultuske

if it's web development you 're looking for:
if you don't understand jsp/jsp and servlets, don't begin with struts or ejb (since they use, gues what?? indeed, jsp and servlets :) )

a good place to start with Java would be to read the sticky post in this forum

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