A few years ago I taught a series of classes in Java programming. These lectures were developed for an online course in programming. As a service to those who would like to learn to program in Java, I have gone back and cleaned up the content (removing the majority of the class specific content) and broken what remains in to small 5 to 10 minute chunks to make the viewing and download easier.
| For these courses the version of Java used was v1.5. The textbook used in the class was Murach’s Java SE 5. That text is no longer available, so I recommend the updated Murach’s Java SE 6. |
Java
The language, tools and software are all free. First, you will need to download the most recent version of Java from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp. You will want to download the JDK (Java Developers Kit) and not the JRE (Java Runtime Environment). The JDK is used to develop the software, the JRE is used to run the software that you develop. You do not have to download both, the JDK contains the JRE.
IDE
For an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) I like Eclipse. It can be downloaded from the Eclipse website and is free for your use. http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ I recommend the Eclipse for Java Developers which currently weighs in at around 92 MB. It is already configured for just about everything we will do in the lectures.
Tutorial Part 1
The following video goes over the basics of downloading and installing JDK and Eclipse with a little background on Java and Eclipse thrown in.
Tutorial Part 2
I go over the basics of configuring Eclipse and answer a few questions from students.