Hi all - I hope you’re enjoying the Introduction To Java course.
To get the most out of the lessons, you need to code along with the examples, and have a go with the exercises. This course is all about building that hands-on familiarity!
So what do you need? Well obviously a laptop helps. But here’s what you might want installed on it,
Java Development Kit
Google this yourself, as the link might change, and you will be asked to search for your own resources. Currently Oracle asks you to register before you can download and install.
The Java Development Kit or JDK allows you to run Java on your machine - there are versions for Windows, Linux, Apple.
Integrated Development Environment IDE
In this course I’ve been using intelliJ IDEA Community edition, which is free. This is where we’ll write our code, and for the most part build and execute it. It requires the JDK, otherwise there’s nothing for it to run/build against (and you’ll get some weird error messages).
You might have heard of other IDEs like Eclipse which behave very similarly to intelliJ, the choice is yours, but you’ll find it easier to follow along with the same IDE I’m using.