[Haoming]

ok so i'm thinking about taking ap comp sci at my school next year which teaches java

i wanna get a headstart over the summer but don't know where to start from lol

what program do people use to make java apps?
i see that theres the normal jdk 5.0 but theres also a netbeans ide, but i doubt the teacher will allow us to use the ide - so i guess i only need the jdk 5.0?

also, what's a good text editor for java? i'm basically looking for a good text editor that just has the lines numbered and code organized ... i like everything else about notepad doesn't have.

[TheHeadFL]

I liked JCreator LE

[M4A1]

Well, your teacher might make all of you (students in the class) use the same compiler. Back when I took AP Java, they made us use BlueJ (very bad). I suggest e-mailing your teacher and asking him/her.

[Aesthetic]

For my Java class, we use Eclipse, which is quite good.

[mgoldb2]

If you looking for something good but not quite a complete IDE try JEdit. I do alot of my java programming in JEDIT.

[furtivefelon]

if you do AP, you HAVE to use blueJ (i don't feel it's as bad, since the teacher made us use TextPad), since the simulation would run the nicest on blueJ..

Grab thinking in java/big java, those are two very good books

[snowman15]

try blueJ
its really easy, im a freshman in highschool and we just started also, its object oriented and really easy to handle
you might want soem libraries but it has everything you need to start