Development using an IDE

An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is a combined editor, compiler and debugging tool. See the department's Java Resources page for a list of possibilities. The features of using an IDE are:

+ it provides a programmer's editor
+ it is platform independent, especially if you choose an IDE which is written in Java
+ it may deal well with large projects with many files
+ it may provide a sophisticated debugging system
+ it may be properly integrated, convenient and efficient
-- it is probably not language independent
-- it may force you to use its own editor rather than your favourite
-- it may be big, using a lot of resources
-- it may be complex, with a steep learning curve
-- it may confuse or distract beginners
-- it may concentrate on the wrong issues, e.g. GUI design rather than object oriented program design
-- it may decrease your productivity, unless you use it full-time

The minuses mean that using an IDE is not recommended for beginners, at the very least not until you understand what the basic Java commands do. If you decide to ignore the minuses, then as with programmer's editors, there are a lot of Java IDEs, mostly poor, it isn't easy to choose and the situation changes with time. So you should type something like "Java IDEs" into Google and do some investigation of your own.

Personally, I don't use an IDE except for an occasional large project carried out intensely over a short period, and many full time developers don't either. My impression is that the best open source IDE is probably Eclipse, which includes the JUnit testing tool. There is also netBeans which is the one that Sun seem to prefer at the moment. A less technically complex option is BlueJ which promotes object oriented design and is now used by a couple of textbooks. (Its download file is a .jar file which gets corrupted by some browsers, so use the ftp download option for safety.)

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