Java Programming 24-Hour Trainer, 2nd Edition

Lesson 2Eclipse IDE

Your first Java program was written in a plain text editor and compiled from a command window, but this is not a productive way of developing software. Professional programmers use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which includes an editor, a compiler, context-sensitive help, a debugger, and a lot more (you become familiar with these features later in this lesson). There are several popular Java IDEs, such as Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, and NetBeans.

Eclipse is by far the most widely used IDE, and I use it for compiling and running most of the examples in this book. But switching from one IDE to another is a pretty simple process, and if you see that in some areas one IDE makes you more productive than the other, just use the best one for the job. As a matter of fact, I prefer IntelliJ IDEA IDE, but this doesn’t stop me from enjoying Java development in Eclipse, too.

Introducing Eclipse IDE

Eclipse IDE is an open-source product that was originally created with a substantial code donation by IBM to the Java community, and from that moment Eclipse was a community-driven product. It started as an IDE for developing Java programs, but today it’s a development platform used for building thousands of tools and plug-ins. Some people are using its Rich Client Platform (RCP) API to develop user interfaces (UIs) for applications. With Eclipse you can easily generate and deploy web applications, start and stop servers, use it as a Database admin tool, and ...