Sorry, I'm using J2EE when I really meant JavaEE. A lot of message boards and whatnot at the time still called it "J2EE" so that's what I remembered it as. I think the version was 6 at the time?
I'm sure it's fine once you learn it all, and I'd probably be able to pick it up quicker now since I have a decade more of experience, but my difficulties with it was not for lack of trying on my end. I found a lot of the terminology difficult to work with, and it felt like doing anything required me to touch a million files across a thousand folders.
As I said, I don't really do web stuff anymore; when I need HTTP nowadays I generally want something a bit quicker and lower level than a full-on web framework.