I really like OGMJ, it's definitely a great resource and I recommend it to many new Java developers; however, I disagree re: tools mentioned.

After trying dropwizard for a few projects, the superiority of the spring-boot and its various ecosystems just blew me away.

Also, while I appreciated Gradle, Maven is just much more supported through the entire eco-system. As a new comer to Java from C++/Python, it made a big difference.

You're probably right about Spring Boot. I've never been a web developer, and TBH, I've had no direct experience with either Boot or DW other than a simple Hello, World. At the time DW seemed the safer choice simply because it used the JAX-RS standards, and using standards in the Java world (especially good ones like JAX-RS) is a very good idea. But in the meantime Spring Boot has also done the right thing and adopted JAX-RS (at least as an alternate API), so I should add it to the post.

As to Maven vs. Gradle, that turned out to be the most controversial point of the entire guide -- which surprised me. Let me put it this way: both are good and I prefer Gradle. Also, Gradle, while still far behind Maven in terms of adoption, has good momentum. Either is a good choice at this moment, but I would guess that Gradle will take the lead in five years (although it's far from a safe bet).

5 years is a long time in IT. Gradle has a millstone called "Groovy" around its neck because of an early poor choice to ship with only one configuration language. Maybe they'll enable more languages to be plugged in later on, but there's an ex-Pivotal programmer who used to work on Groovy now working at Gradleware on Gradle who might sabotage such an effort because of his lingering association with Groovy.

> Maven is just much more supported through the entire eco-system

Could you give some examples? I haven't had much problem with Gradle support, and Gradle's essential advantages over Maven fat outweigh what little I have had.