Unless you need to use a certain plug-in that's only available for a certain IDE, its completely your preference. Try out a couple and pick the one you think looks nicest or has the most convenient keyboard shortcuts.

Most of the IDEs mentioned here come packaged with a lot of stuff you will never need. if you're just going to use it to write, compile, and run java code I'd look for the IDE with the smallest memory footprint.

BlueJ.

... What?

Stephen001 wrote:

Toadfish wrote:

BlueJ.

... What?

I will slay you where you stand.

I'll help!

Notepad....

I believe you mean Notepad++ but that's not really for Java. You can do Java but it's made to be compatible to a lot of programming languages.

Yeah, you can create Java files using notepad(as in the one build into every single windows which creates raw txt files). You use notepad to type your script, save it as filename.java, then use command prompt to compile.

You can also do this with DM, but I suspect most don't, and with good reason.

About the only case it's been handy for me is remote building on Linux servers, for quick fix-ups.

But yes, I suppose if testing some really environment specific stuff is your thing or it's a quick deployment fix-up, and you don't have a package hierarchy to build (what, why????), just a specific package or a few files, then you can follow the notepad route. I suspect there's some prompt-foo for the package hierarchy too, but I'm not too adept at that.

Again, most people working with Java wouldn't be doing general development that way, with good reason. DM makes it easier actually, as the DME forms a hierarchy friendly "manifest" file to compile the lot.

I suspect my initial statement in favour of Eclipse stands however. Once you get into any respectably sized codebase, you'd really be wanting Eclipse's features.