Simple Web Server and MVC framework for Java

If you're teaching someone about fixing cars, you could certainly start with a Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engine and work your way up. I'd suggest starting them with something that's immensely popular instead--a Honda Civic, in our metaphor.

Starting with an immensely popular framework will yield better Internet resources and will have the benefit of lots of others who had run into the same problems before. Also, using something used in the real world and which would appear in job postings isn't a bad way to create productive members of the development community.

I'd suggest Spring MVC. If you want to hide the IoC, that's pretty easy to do as well. A sample:

package samples;

public class SampleController extends AbstractController {

    public ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(
        HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

        ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("hello");
        mav.addObject("message", "Hello World!");
        return mav;        
    }
}