Newbie: Programming environments

[tbalazs]

I would like to get started writing some simple Java routines. I would appreciate recommendations for (possibly free) programmes (Borland? Sun?) to get me started. I have very little (mostly VB, Javascript and Perl) programming experience, plus HTML.
Thanks.
Tony.

 

[prosper]

I recommend Sun jdk1.4
You can find examples of many java program from the book. Using Sun jdk help you understand the operation and theory of java.

If you use Borland JBuilder, you might have to include some library to run.

After you have been familiar with java and Swing, you may try Borland JBuilder for building a gui fastly and get additional support from library for making java bean...

 

[byam]

Eclipse, best FREE IDE. you can easily found a bunch of plug-in for it, (Tomcat, JSP, XML, Hibinate,... you name it).

 

[new2this2002]

As prosper said, first get the Sun JDK and then I would recommend going through the java tutorial

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

and just using an editor like textpad or editplus to compile and run the examples. I think that if you use an IDE straight away you may get confused.

When you feel a bit more confident try out the JBuilder, Netbean or Eclipse IDEs -- all free for download. I just use textpad for simple java programs, i use the IDEs for debugging and a bit of GUI design.

 

[tbalazs]

Thanks folks. Hopefully see you here again. Tony.

 

[stefanwagner]

I would agree mostly to new2this2002.

It is very important to get used to the conventions of java, javac, jar etc., because they expect your classes, the libraries and external jars (libraries) to be accurate specified.
To figure this out it's best not to use a IDE.

Later I would recommend eclipse.
In the beginning (W)SciTe is a good editor, which knows Syntaxhighlightening for about 30 languages and allows working on multiple files.