Java Programming

I'm in a beginning java programming class and I would like to be able to program on my mac.

on a pc i make it in notepad, save it as something.java and then use the command prompt to compile and run it.

On a mac i have no idea how to do it or if it is as easy. if anyone has experiance with doing this i'd be interested.

Hey scrum! I'm in a similar course this semester!

You can basically do exactly what you do on the PC:

Open Textedit, go to the 'Format' menu and select make plain text, type your program, save it as 'program.java'.

Then open the "terminal" (In applications> utilities) and type: "cd the location of your file". (hint, or type "cd " then drag in the file to have the terminal automatically fill in the path).

Then type "javac program.java" to compile and "java program.java" to run it.


That's the basics. If you want a nicer way of doing things, I can highly recommend Textmate. It has built-in systax highlighting, intelligently format your code and has special shortcuts for "compile & run" "complile and run in terminal" and the like.

There are also a bunch of other text editors (Subethaedit is also nice) that have syntax highlighting...

Aptana is a free application for java editing and programming available from Apples site. You need Firefox for debugging but it seems to be very nice from the limited amount i have used it.

If you are looking for a GUI try Eclipse.

I use Vim editor on Terminal for writing java programs. It is preinstalled in every Mac. To activate syntax highlighting, create a file called .vimrc on your users folder ~/ and type syntax on on it. Then save it and restart the Terminal. When you open a jave program next time, you should see all the color effects.

Eclipse gets my vote.

Textmate owns. Not free though... Eclipse is nice if you want a real IDE.

netbeans here

I find eclipse horribly slow... it's probably necessary when you start developing apps with multiple classes, but for simple stuff less is more

Netbeans is nice, and looks more like an Apple app. Eclipse is a bit slow.

knightlie said:

Netbeans is nice.

Click to expand...

But it's GUI builder produces horrible code