Java Reference
In-Depth Information
If you work your way through the 21 days of this topic, you'll become well versed in
Java's capabilities, including graphics, file input and output, web application develop-
ment, Extensible Markup Language (XML) processing, and database connectivity. You
will write programs that run on web pages and others that run on your personal com-
puter, web servers, and other computing environments.
Before you can get started, you must have software on your computer that can be used to
edit, compile, and run Java programs that use the most up-to-date version of the lan-
guage: Java 6.
Several popular integrated development environments for Java support version 6, includ-
ing Borland JBuilder, IntelliJ IDEA, and Eclipse.
These are each recommended by Java developers, but if you are learning to use these
tools at the same time as you are learning Java, it can be a daunting task. Most integrated
development environments are aimed primarily at experienced programmers who want to
be more productive, not new people who are taking their first foray into a new language.
For this reason, unless you are comfortable with a development tool before picking up
this topic, you should probably use the simplest tool for Java development: the Java
Development Kit, which is free and can be downloaded from Sun's Java website at
Whenever Sun releases a new version of Java, it also makes a free development kit avail-
able over the Web to support that version. The current release is the Java Development
Kit Version 6.
For the sake of a few trees, in this topic the language will usually be referred to simply
as Java and the kit as the JDK. You might see the kit referred to elsewhere as Java
Development Kit 6.
If you will be using the JDK to create the tutorial programs in this topic, you can find
out how to get started with the software in Appendix A, “Using the Java Development
Kit.” The appendix covers how to download and install the kit and use it to create a sam-
ple Java program.
After you have a Java development tool on your computer that supports Java 6, you're
ready to dive into the language.
The biggest challenge for a new Java programmer is learning object-oriented program-
ming at the same time as the Java language.
