[Dr. Schoenly] [sbs@olemiss.edu] [contact info] [Univ of Mississippi] [Computer & Info Sci Dept]
Last update: Sunday, August 21, 2005, 06:10 PM

Information for students in Dr. Schoenly's classes concerning:




CS Weir Hall labs

The CS department is located in Weir Hall. See information posted there concerning the hours of operations of the various lab rooms and facilities.

JDK (Java Development Kit) software and various editors are available in the Weir Hall labs.

The Weir Hall CS labs are restricted for use by students currently enrolled in CS classes. Go to the CS department office on the second floor of Weir Hall to inquire about how to apply for an account for access to the CS labs.






Java software (JDK)

Students who have access to their own PCs can use them for completion of exercises. There are various ways of setting up your machine to do Java programming.


First, you can download the free JDK (J2SDK) software. You want to find a recent version of the Java2 software, which will have a name like j2sdk1.4... or jdk5... depending on what the current version happens to be.
Go to
java.sun.com and look for the Java 2 SDK Standard Edition (JDK5) file to download. You will also want the documentation that goes with this. These are big files to download. Local copies of these files are available at the download link below. (In addition to the online JDK documentation, you can also find a fine Java tutorial at the Sun web site.)

Copies of the big JDK files will also be available on CD-ROMs for temporary borrowing by students in the class; this would be especially helpful for students who live off-campus and have only slow dialup Internet connections for their home PCs.

Slightly outdated versions of the JDK would probably be just fine for your course. Just make sure that you have some JDK 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4 or 1.5 (Java 2 SDK, JDK5) version, rather than the outdated JDK 1.0 versions.





Editors to use with the JDK


The JDK includes the compiler (javac.exe), appletviewer (appletviewer.exe), and execution (java.exe) programs that are essential. But you need an editor of some sort to type in your individual programs. Here are some possibilities:

(1) Notepad -- Use the simple text editor that is available on most Windows machines.

(2) UltraEdit -- This is a general-purpose programmer's editor. Go to
www.ultraedit.com to check out the download possibilities. Purchase price is quite modest. (This is the editor that I will use for classroom demonstrations and displays of Java code. Click here to go to my web page which describes how to use UltraEdit for Java programming.)

(3) NetBeans -- This is a free IDE (integrated development environment) available from java.sun.com. It has functionality that is not really needed for introductory programming classes, but can be very helpful for more advanced programmers.


You can get yourself set up for the programming exercises for your class, spending little or no money. However, if you want to, you could buy one of the commercially available Java integrated development environments (IDEs). Consult with your instructor about whether or not that would be a good idea for you.



email: sbs@olemiss.edu Dr. Schoenly's courses: http://cs.olemiss.edu/~sbs/
Downloads Computer Science Dept

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