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You know you're getting old when it takes you a day to configure software...especially when bright-eyed kids half your age accomplish the same thing in two hours flat.

This was the thought that crossed my mind when I recently decided to set up my machine for JSP (Java Server Pages) development. I got myself set up, made sure there was plenty of space available on my hard drive, and went to work downloading the software off the Web. And I spent the next ten hours wading through acres and acres of incomprehensible detail while trying to get Apache, mod_jserv and Tomcat to talk nice to each other.

The task was made more difficult by the fact that each program used different words to refer to the same thing in their separate documentation, and failed to address some of the gotchas common to such a situation. In fact, once I logged on to Deja.com [http://www.deja.com/] and visited a few of the discussion forums, I found that quite a few of the problems I was experiencing had been addressed by users who obviously have larger brains than mine, and it was only after a few hours in the forums that I was finally able to get my JSP development environment up and running.

What's my point? Very simple: if I wasn't so pig-headed, I would have given up on JSP after the first two hours. This would be a shame, since it's actually a pretty powerful language (and looks particularly good on a resume). And so, I decided to put together this article for all those of you who may be struggling with the same problems, in the hope that it will save you some time and answer some of the questions you may have.

No, no, you don't need to thank me. Money's better.

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