[gohwell]

Most of my frustrations in Java development come from building and running the applications.

- Eclipse/Intellij - Both good IDEs. It's crucial to know how to navigate, debug and build your applications using either of these IDEs. I spend a lot of time cursing at Eclipse.

- Spring is a must know. It's a XML-based framework that ties java objects (beans) together. It enables dependency injection and by default creates one instance of each bean. Most java projects I've worked with are implemented with Spring.

- Maven is a package manager. With the help of a POM.xml file it to keeps track of libraries and project dependencies. It also describes how to build the application. It can be tied in with eclipse or run from command line.

- Tomcat - It's a virtual machine that enables your application to dish out java servlets (JSP).

- Message Queues/JMS - Powerful service for publishing and subscribing to messages. Used for communication between servers/applications.

[JQuinn]

Thank you. These technologies will all be looked at. As far as the two suggested IDE's, I have used both (I use Eclipse for recreational coding and Intellij at work). I will have to look further into the other suggested technologies you listed.

[logn]

I'd add Ant to this list. Maven is new and in some respects better, but Ant was first and still used widely.

JDBC is good to know too.

And I'd stress JSP which is widely used too. And learn basic Servlet use.