Re: [gentoo-java] Startup advice

[Chris Woods <chris@bitspace.org>]

Stuart Howard wrote:
> As you might expect I am running on information overload here ;)

[...]

> Anyway my supplemental request is book choice and a mailing list to
> watch for entry/mid level discussions?

Absolutely the best material you can get both for learning and for 
reference is from Sun, hands-down. http://java.sun.com/tutorial - you 
can also purchase a dead tree version if you're more comfortable with a 
book in your hands. I know a lot of people are.

I haven't followed most of this thread, to be honest, but I'm going to 
give my experience-tuned advice on "how to get started with Java", 
something I did 10 years ago.

Start off with that tutorial and a good text editor and the latest JDK - 
1.5.0_06, I believe. The text editor I personally recommend, unless you 
already have a favorite, is jEdit. 4.2 is in portage, or if you want 
bleeding edge, you can get a 4.3 beta. If you're using jdk1.5 and gnome, 
you can change the look and feel to GTK+, and it will adopt your gnome 
theme.

While an IDE is nice for productivity, I think it's best to start off 
with just the command-line tools (javac in particular) and a text editor 
that gives decent syntax highlighting, code completion, etc.  After 
you're comfortable with how it all works, try a few IDE's - that's 
really the only way you'll find one you like. My personal preference is 
JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA, but it's not free. Then when something doesn't 
work right in the IDE, or it's producing unexpected results, you'll have 
a better idea of how to track down the problem because you know Java 
without the cushion of the IDE.

Good luck and have fun.

Chris
chris@bitspace.org
http://bitspace.org/
World peace begins with inner peace.

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