I'd like to be IDE free

[Ben Pike]

Hi,
I've had a couple classes in java at the local community college, and can deal with the fundamentals, sort of, but we have alway used one IDE or another and I'd like to make some programs work from a DOS window. I have Visual Age and Visual Cafe installed, and I tried putting a simple HelloWorld.java in a dir called java on the c: and then typing javac HelloWorld.java but I get 'bad file or command name'. So I suspect the sdk is not being found, though it must be on my machine, somewhere the IDE's find it okay.
Perhaps I need the right classpath set but I am pretty ignorant re OS.
Any 12 step programs for an IDE addict?
thanks in advance

[Dave Landers]

What a wonderful quest. Mostly, it's us old codgers that don't like these new fangled gadgets. Nice to see a greenhorn come along once in a while that feels the same.
Chances are, you have been using the "java stuff" that just came with your IDEs, so it's really not installed on your system - just burried down in the IDE gunk somewheres.
So you probably want to start by downloading and installing a JDK (aka J2SE SDK).
Once you do that, you may have to mess with your PATH so your DOS shell can find java, javac and all the other wonderful things. For example, if you installed java into someplace like C:\jdk14, then you will want to add C:\jdk14\bin to your PATH.
See how far that gets ya.
[ August 24, 2002: Message edited by: Dave Landers ]

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Take a look at The "Your First Cup of Java" Lesson of Sun's Java Tutorial.

[Patrick Tibbetts]

If I may...I would like to share a thought.
I am a command guy all the way. I started on Java using command lines instead of JBuilder or Visual age. (I did, however learn JBuilder just to know it for a potential employer). I think doing everything myself has taught me more about how the compiler works than an IDE. Just give me a simple textpad and I am happy, happy, happy
Thanks
-patrick

[Ben Pike]

yip, yip it worked.
After like the tenth attempt I remembered to add /BIN to the path (though of course I have no notion what a bin is).
Thanks for the help.

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

"bin" = binary files (exe files, com files, stuff like that)

[Tom Purl]

If you want to be truly IDE-free, you should find a good text editor for Java programming. Visual Age and Visual Cafe and so forth are nice in the classroom, but what will you use at home or after the class is done?
Gvim (for win32) or Vim (for Linux) is Free, incredibly powerful, and very cool. However, the learning curve's a bit steep. Also, you can check out Textpad, which is shareware.
Both of these program allow you to compile and run Java programs from the editor window (which is actually pretty sweet) and highlight syntax, amongst other things.