Setting Up a Java Work Environment

I decided to develop a web application using Java for the simple reason that I’m already very experienced with Java and therefore there is no learning curve here for me.

The first thing I need to do is to setup a working Java environment. I’m going to do that using Java 6 and Eclipse.
Eclipse is a great tool for Java development. I also recommend JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, which is very good, but unlike Eclipse, this tool is not free.

The steps for setting up you java environment are (in Windows):

Download and install Java 6 from Sun download page (you need the JDK which includes the JRE as well)

Set JAVA_HOME and PATH environment variables. This is done the following way (in windows):
right click on “My computer” --> select properties --> select the “Advanced” tab --> click on “Environment Variables” and set up JAVA_HOME to the jdk directory, e.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_06. If you don’t have JAVA_HOME just create a new system variable with this name.

Now setup the “Path” variable – add (do not remove the other variables you have there) the bin directory to the Path variable, e.g. add to the beginning of the Path variable C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_06\bin;

Test: open the cmd (command line) and type – “java –version”

also check that the command “javac” is recognized by the command line. If not – check the way you updated the environment variables again.