Integrated Development Environments (IDES)

Tooling Up

When you do real programming, it's unlikely you'll do it with Notepad++ and the command line compiler.
You'll probably use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
These make your life easier.
They take a little time to learn to use, but are worth the investment.

Usually have Syntax colouring (e.g. will colour keywords, strings, method names etc.) and line numbers, like Notepad++.
Push-button formatting.
Usually have one-push compiling and running.
Usually have run-time debugging - stops when your code breaks, shows you where, and tells you the problem. Usually have a facility for stepping through code one line at a time, and watching how variables change. Some will highlight errors as you type.
Often have "auto-complete" drop down lists - you type an Object's name, and they give drop-down lists of the potential methods.
Linking to other people's code.

Rapid Application Development (RAD)
- The software lets you draw user interfaces and writes the code for you. It may or may not then let you alter that code.
Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) Tools
- CASE tools help structure the development process. They may contain facilities for generating UML, converting UML into code, and for seeing which classes are dependent on each other.
- UML - a way of drawing code - we'll come back to this.
Profilers/Refactoring tools
- Show unused code and speed bottlenecks.
- Allow quick altering of multiple files.

Build scripting
- Software that reads scripts that compile your code into different forms.
Version and repository control
- Links to online repositories that store code and maintain different versions you can roll-back to.
Native compilation
- Compilation to executables that don't rely on the JVM, or wrappers for code to install and run the JVM when appropriate.

Netbeans (Oracle)
Eclipse (IBM)
JDeveloper (Oracle; originally based on JBuilder; specifically for Enterprise development)
BlueJ (Kent Uni; Basic beginners IDE)