Start Coding in Java

Career Advice
1

Hi everyone
I decide to start learning coding in java but I don’t know which environment is better for coding…Can you help me?

2

Hey there,

which environments do you have in mind?

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3

I was thinking about NetBeans or IntelliJ

5

Hi there,
if you want to learn the syntax, I’d actually recommend a simple text editor first. An editor without any coding suggestions would help you a lot. After all, you do more then you will remember more. I’d suggest you keep using your editor even when you want to try building some small apps.
Then when you’re quite confident with the syntax, core concepts, and you want to learn some frameworks or advanced stuff, it’s time to move to an IDE.
For IDE, I haven’t used NetBeans yet but IntelliJ is just…good, and its community version is free too! This one I quoted from my upperclassman, you should try and use both, somehow be familiar with it, spend some time to understand its common features. After all, you don’t know which one your future company use right?
You can still stay with the text editor though, but for Java specifically (I don’t know all languages so…), don’t do that. Using it to quickly edit the code if you aren’t using IDE is fine, but like, do a large enough project in Java with just text editor is just, hell (not if you spend enough time configuring things, automate stuff, but that’s another hell tbh)
So to sum things up, here is my recommendation of choices:

  • Text editor: Sublime Text, or you would choose Vim if you are a vimer already
  • IDE: IntelliJ
  • Something along the way: VSCode + Java extensions pack
    The above choices all have good vim modes if you like

Edit: typos

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6

Then try each of them and see which you like most.

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7

There are the choices that I know of today:

  • NetBeans - not used as often professionally, but still a solid Java IDE
  • Eclipse - the “main” one you’d use most of the time
  • Intellij - the paid for solution that probably is the best one, but again you gotta pay for all the features
  • VSCode - used more for web development, but it can handle Java (I haven’t tried it though)
  • Visual Studio - Used more for C#/windows development, but I think it can handle Java if I remember correctly (haven’t tried this in YEARS)

I would suggest using Intellij, as its the best cross platform editor for Java, except you get what you pay for. The free version is still capable, but you will miss out on some features.

Also if our a student (have a student email from a recognized school) you can get the full intellij editor for free for 1 year. (see: https://www.jetbrains.com/community/education/)

Generally any of the first three I mentioned are pretty good, especially if your just starting out. Java is as much the environment and tooling as it is the language. There is no getting around the fact Java is heavy duty. Unlike say JavaScript, Java requires much more tooling to run/use and in practice uses a lot of tooling. There isn’t really a “light weight” choice, so its basically a requirement to use an IDE.

Good luck!

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10

@miku86 @ichirou2910 @bradtaniguchi
Thanks a lot for your help :hibiscus: :pray:

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