What's a good Java IDE

[Begby]

I want to learn some Java, and would like to know what a good IDE to start with would be.

[znaps]

I like Eclipse...it's free also.

http://www.eclipse.org

Others popular IDE's are IntelliJ (which is really good too), Netbeans (Free also), Oracle9i Developer and JBuilder.

[rock]

I would always suggest just starting with a good editor, preferably with syntax highlighting (see jEdit (http://www.jedit.org)). But if you really need an IDE, I've had some luck using Source Navigator (http://sources.redhat.com/sourcenav/). I'm starting to use netbeans (http://www.netbeans.org/) to help build complex GUIs. In discussions on Sun's forums, it appears that IBM's Visual Age (http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/zones/vajava/) rules the roost, but it costs $$.

BTW, I ran across this page on choosing an IDE (http://homepage.tinet.ie/~pugsleypaul/java/ide.htm) while trying to find the IBM link. Worth reading.

[Harbinger]

I used codewarrior and was happy with that. What ever you do, don't use microsoft's J++, it's EVIL, it defaults to making you use Microsoft's version of Java, blek.

[znaps]

Originally posted by rock
[B]I would always suggest just starting with a good editor, preferably with syntax highlighting (see jEdit (http://www.jedit.org)). But if you really need an IDE, I've had some luck using Source Navigator (http://sources.redhat.com/sourcenav/). I'm starting to use netbeans (http://www.netbeans.org/) to help build complex GUIs. In discussions on Sun's forums, it appears that IBM's Visual Age (http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/zones/vajava/) rules the roost, but it costs $$.


Visual Age is out - it doesn't support any versions of the JDK above 1.2.2. It has been replaced by WebShere Application Developer which is basically Eclipse with bits added on.

[Begby]

Great, this should get me started, everyone mentioned a bunch of stuff I never heard of, so there are a lot of things out there for me to try.

Thanks