Which Java Technologies Are Truly Obsolete? A Practical Guide

I've been using Java for over ten years and have witnessed many shifts, from the chaotic JavaEE era to the dominance of Spring, from SSH to Spring MVC + MyBatis, and from JBuilder to IDEA.

My evaluation criteria

1. Can it be used in actual development? 2. Does it deepen technical understanding? 3. Is it useful for interviews?

JSP

JSP serves as the View layer in traditional MVC, but modern projects favor full front‑end/back‑end separation, rendering JSP largely unnecessary. Recommendation: stop learning JSP.

Struts

Struts is a solid MVC framework, yet Spring MVC has become the de‑facto standard, offering tighter integration with the Spring ecosystem. Recommendation: stop learning Struts and start with Spring MVC.

Hibernate

Hibernate provides powerful ORM capabilities but brings high learning cost, complex configuration, and difficult performance tuning. MyBatis offers a lightweight, hybrid approach that retains ORM benefits while allowing direct SQL control. Recommendation: stop learning Hibernate and focus on MyBatis.

Servlet (must master)

Pure Servlet applications are rare, but Servlet remains the foundation of Java web containers and underpins all MVC frameworks, including Spring MVC. Mastering its lifecycle enables advanced request/response interception and custom processing. Recommendation: learn Servlet deeply.

Other technologies

Applets are obsolete; Swing is seldom used for modern desktop applications; JDBC, while fundamental, can be deprioritized if time is limited; XML is being replaced by JSON for web data exchange, so a basic understanding suffices.