From: David Segall on
Clarence Blumstein <blumstein.clarence(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>Do you suggest me using IDE when I'm learning JAVA? because I'm about
>to using Eclipse when I'm learning JAVA? Did you using IDE while/when
>are a beginner?

An emphatic yes! Your first step should be to compile and run the
usual "Hello World" application without using an IDE. After that an
IDE provides a tutor that looks over your shoulder as you write and
test your programs. I would suggest Netbeans instead of Eclipse as a
tutor. On the other hand, Eclipse and its derivatives are far more
popular than Netbeans so if you are looking for a job, Eclipse
experience may be more valuable.
From: Tom Anderson on
On Tue, 27 Apr 2010, Clarence Blumstein wrote:

> Do you suggest me using IDE when I'm learning JAVA?

No. You have enough to learn without also having to master an IDE.

You should definitely have a good programmer's editor, though. On Windows,
Notepad2, Notepad++, or EditPad Lite. On OS X, TextWrangler. On unix with
GNOME, gedit. On unix with KDE, i have yet to find one. jEdit is in java,
so that will work on any platform.

Basically, what you want is a plain text editor that does auto-indentation
and line numbering (or at least a jump-to-line command). You'll go
completely mad without those.

On top of that, syntax highlighting is nice, structure awareness (so you
get an outline or a dropdown menu of the methods in a class which you can
jump to) is nice, fancy editing shortcuts (for things like deleting the
whole current line, moving the selected lines up or down in the file,
indenting or outdenting the selected lines, etc) are nice.

Things you don't want now are autocompletion (because you won't learn the
API), automated compilation (because you won't learn the compiler), and
any enforced notions of project setup (because you'll have to struggle
with it for ages before you can write a single line of code, and even when
you get it working, you won't learn how to set up a project).

> because I'm about to using Eclipse when I'm learning JAVA?

Good luck.

> Did you using IDE while/when are a beginner?

No.

tom

--
Get my pies out of the oven!
From: Tom Anderson on
On Tue, 27 Apr 2010, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Clarence Blumstein <blumstein.clarence(a)gmail.com> writes:
>> Do you suggest me using IDE when I'm learning JAVA?
>
> No, when you are learning Java, I would never
> dare to disturb you by suggesting an IDE!

:)

tom

--
Get my pies out of the oven!
From: Tom Anderson on
On Tue, 27 Apr 2010, cr88192 wrote:

> anymore, I typically just do coding (in general) via the mix of Notepad,
> Explorer, and a command prompt (and typically GNU Make for building).
> not that there is anything noble about this, only that this approach
> just better suits my uses and personal experience (there are pros and
> cons to IDEs).
>
> my projects are also largish and mixed language (and largely C), and I
> use some amount of "custom tooling", which may also be a factor, ...

Oh, it's *all about* the custom tooling.

When i was younger, i used to maintain a store of useful classes and
functions, a sort of personal subroutine library i could apply to
different projects. As i got older, i stopped; i learned to be able to do
the things it could do using the standard library or easily available
third-party libraries, or just got to the point where i could whip them up
from scratch every time without difficulty. But now, what i have is a
growing collection of custom tooling - scripts for this, templates for
that, ant jobs for the other. I wonder if i'll outgrow that too, and if
so, what will come next?

tom

--
Get my pies out of the oven!
From: Lew on
cr88192 wrote:
> anymore, I typically just do coding (in general) via the mix of Notepad,

Notepad is very bad for Java programming because most extant versions
don't handle Unicode and they don't like cross-platform line endings.

> Explorer, and a command prompt (and typically GNU Make for building). not

And Gnu make is useless for Java.

> that there is anything noble about this, only that this approach just better
> suits my uses and personal experience (there are pros and cons to IDEs).
>

I am a big fan of command-line project deployment, but those tools you
mention are not very useful for Java.

--
Lew