“Hello World!”
I don’t have to tell you about Java. Everybody and their mother runs it on their mobile phones, it’s probably in the browser you’re looking at and who knows where else.
In case you really, really don’t know, it’s a programming language. To start programming Java (or any other programming language for that matter) you’ll need an editor first. As you might know, you can use Windows own Notepad, but soon enough you just might think, this ain’t good enough.
There are a number of editors out there and you’ll find gazillions of opinions on which one is best and who the hell am i to tell you anything. But there’s only one number of editors on this page, so put a sock in it and read on.
To start of and when firing up the IDE is just overkill for the three lines of code you were thinking of, i like ConText. It has syntax highlighting for of course Java, C/C+, Delphi/Pascal, Visual Basic and a bunch of others built in and – if you download them – alot more, including UnrealScript.
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- Eclipse IDE
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- ConTEXT script editor
Whether you’re using Notepad, ConText or completely ignore what i just said, you might wanna hit a bookstore and get some books on Java. Or you just save the money and go to the Sun website instead to download the Java Tutorials. Those guys developed Java, so who’s your daddy?
Once you’ve run the “Hello World!” application 25 times, you probably feel the need to get a more sophisticated piece of software. That’s when you go Eclipse. It’s a complete IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and guess what – it’s free! Sounds great, works even better. Now that you got the apps, the tuts (don’t you just hate it when people shorten just about everything on the internet?) all you need now is someone to explain how to use Eclipse. The usual internet answer in a very uncool forum is “RTFM!”. If you hang out with the kind guys and girls, someone might point you to the video tutorials from Mark Dexter. Okay, you might not like the music, but you gotta love Mark for 16 beginner tutorials and then some.
So go get scripting. The world you just said hello to is all yours.
