base on Roadmap to becoming a Java developer in 2026 # Java Developer Roadmap > Roadmap to becoming a [Java](https://g.co/kgs/bzeRda) developer in 2026: Below you can find a chart demonstrating the paths that you can take and the libraries that you would want to learn to become a Java developer. I made this chart as a tip for everyone who asks me, "What should I learn next as a Java developer?" [中文版](./i18n/zh-CN/ReadMe-zh-CN.md) ## Disclaimer > The purpose of this roadmap is to give you an idea about the landscape. The road map will guide you if you are > confused about what to learn next, rather than encouraging you to pick what is hip and trendy. You should grow some > understanding of why one tool would be better suited for some cases than the other and remember hip and trendy does > not > always mean best suited for the job ## Give a Star! :star: If you like or are using this project to learn or start your solution, please give it a star. Thanks! ## Roadmap  ## Resources 1. Prerequisites - [Java](https://www.java.com/en/download/) - [Gradle](https://gradle.org/) or [Maven](https://maven.apache.org/) - [SQL](https://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp) 2. General Development Skills - Learn GIT, create a few repositories on GitHub, share your code with other people - Know HTTP(S) protocol, request methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, OPTIONS) - Don't be afraid of using Google, [Power Searching with Google](http://www.powersearchingwithGoogle.com/) - Read a few books about algorithms and data structures - Learn about implementation of a basic Authentication - Solid principles, etc 3. CLI Tools 1. [args4j](http://args4j.kohsuke.org/) 2. [JCommander](http://jcommander.org/) 3. [airline](https://github.com/airlift/airline) 4. Web Frameworks + Routers 1. [Spring](https://spring.io/) 2. [helidon](https://helidon.io) 3. [Spark](http://sparkjava.com/) 4. [dropwizard](https://www.dropwizard.io/en/stable/) 5. [nanohttpd](https://github.com/NanoHttpd/nanohttpd) 6. [Vertx](https://vertx.io/) 5. Databases 1. Relational 1. [SQL Server](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2017) 2. [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/) 3. [MariaDB](https://mariadb.org/) 4. [MySQL](https://www.mysql.com/) 5. [Oracle](https://www.oracle.com/database/) 2. Cloud Databases - [CosmosDB](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db) - [DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/) 3. Search Engines - [ElasticSearch](https://www.elastic.co/) - [Opensearch](https://opensearch.org/) - [Algolia](https://www.algolia.com/) 4. NoSQL - [MongoDB](https://www.monJavadb.com/) - [Redis](https://redis.io/) - [Apache Cassandra](http://cassandra.apache.org/) - [Clickhouse](https://clickhouse.com/) - [InfluxDB](https://www.influxdata.com/) - [CouchDB](http://couchdb.apache.org/) - [Weaviate](https://weaviate.io) 6. ORMs 1. [Hibernate](https://hibernate.org/) 2. [Ebean](https://ebean.io/) 7. Caching 1. [Caffeine](https://github.com/ben-manes/caffeine) 2. [EHCache](http://www.ehcache.org/) 3. [Cache2k](https://cache2k.org/) 4. Distributed Cache 1. [Java-Redis](https://github.com/xetorthio/jedis) 2. [Java-Memcached](https://redislabs.com/lp/memcached-java/) 3. [Infinispan](http://infinispan.org/) 8. Logging 1. Log Frameworks - [Zap](https://github.com/uber-Java/zap) - [TinyLog](http://www.tinylog.org/) - [log4j](https://logging.apache.org/log4j) 2. Log Management System - [ELK Stack](https://www.elastic.co/what-is/elk-stack) - [Sentry.io](http://sentry.io) - [Loggly.com](https://loggly.com) - [Tracer](https://github.com/zalando/tracer) 9. Real-Time Communication 1. [Socket.IO](https://socket.io/) 2. [atmosphere](https://github.com/Atmosphere/atmosphere) 3. [webbit](https://github.com/webbit/webbit) 10. API Clients 1. REST - [okhttp](https://square.github.io/okhttp/) - [retrofit](https://square.github.io/retrofit/) 2. [GraphQL](https://graphql.org/) 11. Good to Know - [Beanvalidation](https://beanvalidation.org/) - [bouncycastle](https://www.bouncycastle.org/java.html) - [gson](https://github.com/google/gson) - [Apache Shiro](https://shiro.apache.org/) - [JJWT](https://github.com/jwtk/jjwt) - [RxJava](https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava) - [Quarkus](https://quarkus.io/) 12. Testing 1. Unit, Behavior, Integration, Load Testing - [JUnit](http://junit.org/) - [JMeter](https://jmeter.apache.org/) - [CitrusFramework](https://citrusframework.org/) - [Gatling](https://gatling.io/) - [Tsung](http://tsung.erlang-projects.org/) - [Mockito](https://site.mockito.org/) - [Assertj](https://joel-costigliola.github.io/assertj) 2. E2E Testing - [Selenium](https://github.com/tebeka/selenium) - [Wiremock](https://wiremock.org/) - [Testcontainers](https://testcontainers.com/) 13. Task Scheduling - [Aurora](https://aurora.apache.org/) - [elasticjob](https://github.com/elasticjob/elastic-job-lite) - [Sundial](https://github.com/knowm/Sundial) - [cron-utils](https://github.com/jmrozanec/cron-utils) 14. AI/ML/LLM - [langchain4j](https://github.com/langchain4j/langchain4j) - [langgraph4j](https://github.com/langgraph4j/langgraph4j) 15. MicroServices 1. Message-Broker - [RabbitMQ](https://www.rabbitmq.com/tutorials/tutorial-one-javascript.html) - [Apache Kafka](https://www.npmjs.com/package/kafka-node) - [ActiveMQ](https://github.com/apache/activemq) - [Apache Pulsar](https://pulsar.apache.org/) 2. Message-Bus - [mbassador](https://github.com/bennidi/mbassador) - [rmq](https://github.com/xetorthio/rmq) 3. Frameworks - [Apollo](https://spotify.github.io/apollo/) - [lagom-framework](https://www.lightbend.com/lagom-framework) - [micronaut](https://micronaut.io/) - [eureka](https://github.com/Netflix/eureka) - [helidon](https://helidon.io/#/) - [armeria](https://github.com/line/armeria) 4. RPC - [Protocol Buffers](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf) - [gRPC-Java](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-java) - [thrift](https://thrift.apache.org/) 5. Workflow Engine - [Temporal](https://temporal.io) 16. [Java-Patterns](https://github.com/iluwatar/java-design-patterns) ## Wrap Up If you think the roadmap can be improved, please do open a PR with any updates and submit any issues. Also, I will continue to improve this, so you might want to star this repository to revisit. Idea from : [Golang Developer Roadmap](https://github.com/Alikhll/golang-developer-roadmap) ## Contribution The roadmap is built using [Draw.io](https://www.draw.io/). Project file can be found at `java-developer-roadmap.xml` file. To modify it, open draw.io, click **Open Existing Diagram** and choose `xml` file with project. It will open the roadmap for you. Update it, upload and update the images in readme and create a PR (export as png with 400% zoom and minify that with [Compressor.io](https://compressor.io/compress)). - Open a pull request with improvements - Discuss ideas in issues - Spread the word ## License [](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) ", Assign "at most 3 tags" to the expected json: {"id":"5544","tags":[]} "only from the tags list I provide: [{"id":77,"name":"3d"},{"id":89,"name":"agent"},{"id":17,"name":"ai"},{"id":54,"name":"algorithm"},{"id":24,"name":"api"},{"id":44,"name":"authentication"},{"id":3,"name":"aws"},{"id":27,"name":"backend"},{"id":60,"name":"benchmark"},{"id":72,"name":"best-practices"},{"id":39,"name":"bitcoin"},{"id":37,"name":"blockchain"},{"id":1,"name":"blog"},{"id":45,"name":"bundler"},{"id":58,"name":"cache"},{"id":21,"name":"chat"},{"id":49,"name":"cicd"},{"id":4,"name":"cli"},{"id":64,"name":"cloud-native"},{"id":48,"name":"cms"},{"id":61,"name":"compiler"},{"id":68,"name":"containerization"},{"id":92,"name":"crm"},{"id":34,"name":"data"},{"id":47,"name":"database"},{"id":8,"name":"declarative-gui "},{"id":9,"name":"deploy-tool"},{"id":53,"name":"desktop-app"},{"id":6,"name":"dev-exp-lib"},{"id":59,"name":"dev-tool"},{"id":13,"name":"ecommerce"},{"id":26,"name":"editor"},{"id":66,"name":"emulator"},{"id":62,"name":"filesystem"},{"id":80,"name":"finance"},{"id":15,"name":"firmware"},{"id":73,"name":"for-fun"},{"id":2,"name":"framework"},{"id":11,"name":"frontend"},{"id":22,"name":"game"},{"id":81,"name":"game-engine "},{"id":23,"name":"graphql"},{"id":84,"name":"gui"},{"id":91,"name":"http"},{"id":5,"name":"http-client"},{"id":51,"name":"iac"},{"id":30,"name":"ide"},{"id":78,"name":"iot"},{"id":40,"name":"json"},{"id":83,"name":"julian"},{"id":38,"name":"k8s"},{"id":31,"name":"language"},{"id":10,"name":"learning-resource"},{"id":33,"name":"lib"},{"id":41,"name":"linter"},{"id":28,"name":"lms"},{"id":16,"name":"logging"},{"id":76,"name":"low-code"},{"id":90,"name":"message-queue"},{"id":42,"name":"mobile-app"},{"id":18,"name":"monitoring"},{"id":36,"name":"networking"},{"id":7,"name":"node-version"},{"id":55,"name":"nosql"},{"id":57,"name":"observability"},{"id":46,"name":"orm"},{"id":52,"name":"os"},{"id":14,"name":"parser"},{"id":74,"name":"react"},{"id":82,"name":"real-time"},{"id":56,"name":"robot"},{"id":65,"name":"runtime"},{"id":32,"name":"sdk"},{"id":71,"name":"search"},{"id":63,"name":"secrets"},{"id":25,"name":"security"},{"id":85,"name":"server"},{"id":86,"name":"serverless"},{"id":70,"name":"storage"},{"id":75,"name":"system-design"},{"id":79,"name":"terminal"},{"id":29,"name":"testing"},{"id":12,"name":"ui"},{"id":50,"name":"ux"},{"id":88,"name":"video"},{"id":20,"name":"web-app"},{"id":35,"name":"web-server"},{"id":43,"name":"webassembly"},{"id":69,"name":"workflow"},{"id":87,"name":"yaml"}]" returns me the "expected json"