well frameworks have really come into play because they take out a lot of the code you write over and over again every application. You'll find frameworks centered toward the UI in web applications like Spring MVC,
Struts 1 and 2, and many others. Then there are persistence layer frameworks such as Hibernate , IBetas, and many more. It's just a way to get things done faster and have a rough structure to them. Easier to maintain (if you learn the framework).
I too started off using good old textpad with javac to compile my code. Now I'm on eclipse having my getters/setters, for loops and many other things being generated for me, while
ant compiles all my code and builds my wars or jars for me. I no longer write sql, but put together queries using
java beans and their attributes.
There are a ton of them out there, but if you get the right ones they can really help you get a lot done. It takes time up front, but after you get used to them you can fly through a project setup.
I've been using Struts/SpringMVC, Hibernate, Spring, Log4j, Ant,
Junit for most of my projects. so far so good both on large and small projects, personally and professionally.
I hope this helped a little bit. Good luck sifting through all this stuff. Just look out for Grails, it's RoR but in java. interesting stuff.
