SURPRISE!
For starters, there are a whole bunch of command line tools for developers. I don't like any of them. My point and click thingys are gone. The free Java IDEs make me want to cry. It's the kind of paradigm shift that makes my head hurt. Most of the headache is my own fault of course. I'm not saying that the professional community needs to make this stuff easier, but it does seem like I'm doing a lot of learning simply because it's differently technology. Imagine if Toyota made cars in a completely different way than Ford. It's the kind of thing that just doesn't make much sense.
I'm not complaining so much as I'm simply pointing out that I'm going to be learning a lot from scratch which is frustrating considering I could easily put together a web app using Visual Studio with far less effort. Too late. I'm already in up to my chest. So...
Any good ideas about which Java IDE I should focus on? I've spent a little time in Eclipse, but I'm looking at IntelliJ. Netbeans got about 5 minutes from me before I moved on to Eclipse. Did I move on too fast? Let me know in the comments. I'll pick one and profile my experience getting my other website up and running with it.