Java™ for ColdFusion® Developers

Chapter 6. IDEs

Now we turn to the final element in the Getting Started section: integrated development environments (IDEs). Working on Java projects of any size or complexity requires having a good development environment. Because programs in Java participate in packages, require working with what are often large and complex libraries, and can have fussy compilation and deployment settings, you really need to have an environment to work in.

Of course Java programs are plain text, so the only real requirement is a plain text editor. If you only need to knock off a simple program to test something out, typing out your code in Notepad or Emacs and then compiling it from the prompt should work fine. But this quickly becomes tiresome and obviously ...