Which Java Technologies Are Truly Obsolete in 2025? A Backend Developer’s Guide

My Evaluation Criteria

Can it be used in real development?

Does it deepen technical understanding?

Is it useful for interviews?

JSP

JSP is mainly used as the View layer in the MVC model, but most companies have abandoned or are abandoning this mixed development approach in favor of full front‑back separation, where the backend only provides REST services.

Consequently, learning JSP is no longer necessary; you can safely drop it.

Struts

Struts was once a solid MVC framework, but Spring MVC has become the dominant, well‑integrated choice within the Spring ecosystem.

Most new projects now use Spring MVC, so beginners should start with Spring MVC instead of Struts.

Hibernate

Hibernate offers powerful ORM capabilities but comes with high learning cost, complex configuration, and difficult performance tuning.

When performance is critical, the abstraction can become a drawback, and developers need deep knowledge to optimize.

MyBatis provides a lightweight, hybrid approach that retains ORM benefits while allowing direct SQL access, making it a more practical choice today.

Therefore, focus on MyBatis rather than Hibernate.

Servlet (Master It)

Although no company builds a full web app solely with raw Servlets today, the Servlet API remains the foundation of Java web containers and underpins all MVC frameworks, including Spring MVC.

Understanding the Servlet lifecycle enables advanced techniques such as request/response interception, permission checks, and unified response handling.

Thus, learning Servlets deeply is essential for mastering any Java web framework.

Other Technologies

Applet

Applets are obsolete and have been replaced by modern web technologies.

Swing

Swing is rarely used in production; desktop applications in China typically use C++ (MFC) or C# (WinForms/WPF).

JDBC

JDBC is the low‑level database API that many frameworks (e.g., MyBatis) wrap; you can deprioritize its study if time is limited.

XML

XML is still used but is being superseded by JSON for web data exchange; a basic understanding suffices.