Getting the Java Developer's Kit
- Okay, OOP is quite abstract and if you're like me, your brain is probably swimming by now.
- So let's step back and do some really concrete stuff. let's get ourselves a copy of the Java Developer's Kit so that we can actually try out some actual examples of all of this stuff.
- The JDK is a development environment which allows you to create Java Programs.
- It includes such essential things as the java class libraries, the javac bytecode compiler and the java virtual machine which you can use to execute your applications.
- There are plenty of other development environments such as Symantec Cafe, Microsoft's SDK, J++. However, I recommend that you go through the process of developing with the JDK in order to really get a good feel for the processs of creating and compiling Java by hand. Visual developmnt tools are very nice, but they do not help you understand the inner workings of the language.
- The most recent version as of this writing is JDK 1.1.5 and will come as a self extracting archive. Here is a screen shot of what the Javasoft site should look like. And here is an example of a Save Dialog generated by my web browser when I began to download the JDK. Give yourself plenty of time because the JDK takes a good ten minutes to download, especially over a modem. Go ahead and download the documentation as well.
- Once you have downloaded the self-extracting archive, you should execute it (typically by double clicking on it). When you do so, the install program will walk you through an installation of the JDK on your local machine. Here is what it looked like when I started Install Shield.
- In order to keep your hard disk organized, I recomend installing the JDK in a top level folder like "C:\Java\Sun" because it is likely that you will get other "Java-centric" libraries and development kits in the future.
- When the installation program is done working, you should have the JDK installed on your machine. Here is what my directory structure looked like after I installed it:
Additional Resources:
- Learning to Write Java
- Introducing Java (TM) - Your First Applet
- Java FAQs
- Java Software
- Java (TM) Development Tools
- java.sun.com
- Sun Microsystems
Exercise
Five
Table of Contents
Setting Your Development Environment
