Help me if you can: I'm feeling down

Start with the help that Eclipse (or NetBeans, etc.) provides you to solve problems in using your development environment. Often, the answers available fail to be useful because their author(s) can write only to general usage. However, perusing them will at least give you the language—terminology—of the product for when you resort to Googling or asking a question in a forum.

Read introductory material proposed on Eclipse's splash screen, on eclipse.org or in books.

Google is your friend

Let's say you get an HTTP status of 500 when you run your web application for the first time or, you get a 404 (not found) and the path in the browser address line is exactly the one you expected to see.

You pore through your web.xml and faces-config.xml files, but see nothing wrong. You resort to Google.

Googling, in some place you see advice on changing from "javax...." to "org.apache....", don't believe this. You're seeing advice on someone else's favorite JSF approach and that might not be the one you're following. Learn to weigh the quality of the advice against what you're really doing.

You might also see something about errors in Tomcat handling spaces %20 and begin to wonder if you should be careful about how you develop on Windows and whether you can have hyphens, dots, etc. in your paths. Don't sweat it. First, Tomcat fixed this back in 5.5. Second, it's a red herring as far as Eclipse goes, so name your project whatever you want: that's not what's breaking you.

The point is, Google is your friend, but don't jump incautiously at everything you see. Leave yourself a back door (code back-up, comments, etc.) so you can get back on track after the Googled solution fails to pan out.

Use intelligent search strings

If you're reading this, you're probably an experienced software developer and I don't need to tell you this because you long ago figured it out and have been doing it even when you're just going Internet shopping.

However, never underestimate the possibility that someone had the problem before you. So, Google obvious strings like the very error reported that you're trying to sort out.

Don't search for "http status 404", of course.

Do search for "SEVERE: Error configuring application listener of class org.apache.myfaces.webapp.StartupServletContextListener".

Knowing the language and terminology of your subject is crucial to finding answers on-line too.

It's in the book

Books help a lot because they treat the subject more slowly. However, not all the answers are there either, in particular, a book may fail to give you explicit instructions if you're trying to use Eclipse. The book is trying to remain general and relevant, independent of the continued march of IDEs like NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc.

The down-sides of a book are that it's expensive, you have to wait for it to arrive before using it, and it quickly goes out of date.

I bought a book to help me learn to use Eclipse Web Tools Platform, but the examples were of no use because they pertained to an early version of WTP that was dated even by the appearance of Europa.

Funny things happen on the way to the forum

Dedicated forums are a great place. Some, like Eclipse newcomers' and JavaRanch are über friendly. Responders in others will heap abuse on you. Don't lose sight of why you're there. Don't be a troll. Don't waste your time and weary other readers by fighting the trolls. Just follow these two rules:

1. State your question as succinctly (keep it short), but as thoroughly (make it informative) as you can.
 
2. When you figure out the solution, go back and respond to the forum thread with a brief description.

The more information you give, without making your question so long as to discourage others from responsing, the quicker you'll get an answer. If you give too little information such as, "I installed Eclipse, but it won't launch", the obvious replies will be "what does it do?", "what's in your eclipse.ini file" and so on. Give this information up front.

Learn the language of the product or technology about which you have questions. Choose the forum(s) most relevant to what you're doing and begin being an active reader in them so you are used to the language and habits.

Ask questions relevant to the forum of which you ask them.

Don't cross-post. Identify the best forum and ask your question. Don't ask it in parallel across several forums. Many responders are active in multiple forums and are offended by the inelegance and selfishness suggested by this practice. Some will even criticize you for it.