Updated June 29, 2000
Hi, welcome to Roby's Java Tutorial. It's been a long long time since I wrote my last tutorial. You may want a good supplement for Java tutorial from Sun's. I found out that their tutorial is somewhat too sharp for beginners. After some first few beginner strokes, they advance to advanced material very quickly. I guess that they assume their readers understand some other programming language, especially C/C++. That's why I wrote this tutorial. I also write some chapters on how C/C++ programmers or other language programmers so that they can adapt Java quite easily since they don't need to brush up every basic stuff once again.
I used JDK most of the times since version 1.0 to build all of my programs. I touched MS Visual J++ 6.0. It was great and its DirectX / DirectX Media were very tempting. However, I just love the classical JDK until I met IBM's Visual Age for Java. You can even download the trial version. Cool. Check that out. I think all professional should try that one. If you prefer the Visual Basic or Delphi style, you can try Borland's JBuilder. The "foundation" version is free. That's great too. If you simply want the 100% free, standard, and multi-platform one, why don't you take a peek at Sun's site, the origin of Java. That's the one I regularly use. The current version is 1.3.
What you need to build your Java program is to pick one of the development software around the corner. Since Sun's Java is the original and long established one, I use that one. It's fully up to you to choose those wide-range options. For throughout the tutorial, I just teach the standard JDK without the fancy stuff you may have in your tool. You may need to fully understand the options and how to use your development tool prior to this tutorial. For JDK users, I assume you have already installed your JDK correctly in your system. Refer to Sun's manual included in the package for more details. You can click here on the tutorial of how to compile a Java program and some explanation on installation stuff.
You may need to have a text editor. Windows' notepad or Dos' Edit will do. You may want a fancier text editor that provide syntax highlighting and stuff. Probably, UltraEdit or WinEdit is your choice. Java version 1.3 came with an IDE intact, I never used them :-). It's up to you, too.
I make the tutorial packages smaller so that it's somehow easier to manage. Moreover, I can release all things faster :-). OK, here's how:
Lesson 1: Basic of Java
I just introduce basic Java programming elements. The lesson starts with
text-based application and some examples. I intend to present this lesson for
real beginners. I just assume nothing on programming. Just click here
for details.
Lesson 2: OOP and Stuffs
Then we move on the OOP and the understandings of Java rather deeply. After
that, we discuss some basic packages that make life easier. :-) Not done.
Lesson 3: Packages
More about packages and how to make
packages.
Future: AWT & Applet, Swing, JDBC, Java Beans, etc.
I haven't think about going into this one. I'm sure I would. But it will take some time to go to this one.
Roby Joehanes, © June 2000