Java Acronym City

I went to a job search site. Looked up Java programming positions close to my house. The listing were filled with buzzwords. I guess Java is so much more than a programming language. You got to know some libraries, frameworks, and a whole suite of technology that goes along with it. I came late to the Java party. Initially I thought there was no need to learn Java. C++ gave me everything I needed. Now I am not so sure.

I took some community college courses on Java programming. The intro course was a disappointment. I kept asking questions in class. But I didn't really get many answers. Finally the instructor told me he did not know Java. He was teaching the course because nobody else wanted to teach it. Great. I learned some Java that semester. However it was a disappointment.

My intermediate Java college course was a whole different experience. It was taught by a guy who was deep into Java. There was hardly a question he could not answer. And when the rare instance came where he did not immediately know, he could get the answer for me quickly. Oh I learned a lot during that semester. Good stuff like network programming, database programming, collections, etc.

Back to the buzzword bingo. I figure I should at learn determine what the acronyms in the Java universe mean. Here are some that I found during my job listing search. These are the ones that kept popping up on job requirements:

• JSP
• EJB
• JMS
• JDBC
• JAXB
• J2EE
• MVC
• JBOSS
• XML

There were also many technologies listed that were not acronyms. The most popular were:

• Servlet
• Struts
• Spring
• Maven
• Web Services
• Eclipse
• Hibernate
• Tomcat
• Apache

Luckily I know what some of these are. Took a whole semester course on XML. Did a week or so on JSPs and JDBC. We touched on Servlets a little. And I have used Eclipse but it is not my favorite IDE. Played with Tomcat/Apache. There is still a whole lot to learn. And that's just the most popular buzzwords. So little time.