Let’s begin with the most important thing if you want to develop in Java. You need JRE and JDK, you probably have JRE, because it is required by some websites to display (like banking, chats, games). But what they are?
- JRE stands for Java Runtime Environment, and it is basically software that allows you to run programs written in Java using JVM (Java Virtual Machine), if you have experience in programming in other languages, most of them are compiled to binary code, and executed directly by processor, that requires to compile different versions of programs for any other operating system or processor type. JVM acts like virtual machine (it just is a virtual machine), and executes compiled java program (java programs are compiled to bytecode)
- JDK is a set of applications that allows you to write programs in java, it provides you a compiler, loader, debugger and more useful tools.
More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JDK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JRE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Virtual_Machine
Getting JRE:
- Go to http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp click blue button “Free Java Download”
- Download file is used to download appropriate JRE, that will start after you run it.
JDK (quite harder):
- Go to: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp click “Download” near: “Java SE Development Kit (JDK) 6 Update xx”, where “xx” is latest java update, currently 12 (it’s on top)
- Than select your OS, language, and confirm reading and accepting EULA.
- If download didn’t start automatically click “jdk-6uxx-windows-i586-p.exe”
- After JDK installation we can move to another point which is installing IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
Next step soon, after that we can start real codding:)