Kornhornio's Kreations

Programming

Holy flaming crap!

It's been a while since I updated this page. Most of the links below are very outdated and probably broken, and the information is even older and probably just about useless.

FreeJava is one of the best Java IDEs? Um, no. Apparently this page got left behind in about 1999. Just off the top of my head, you'd do much better with Eclipse (free), NetBeans (free), or IDEA (not free, but it's VERY good). You'll still need the JDK (free, now under the GPL?) to use any of that, though.

I'll post a real update to this page; I promise. I'd like to expand it and maybe even write some tutorials of my own. What do you think? Have any suggestions or requests?

C/C++

If you would like to get some programming lessons, try Brian Brown's tutorial for an excellent course on programming in C. It covers introductory topics through advanced. You will also need a compiler such as DJGPP, which is available as a free download.

Java

Sun's Java Page is an excellent starting place since Sun is the company that started Java. This is where you can find the Java Development Kit (JDK) and their tutorial. Although their tutorial gives a good background on classes and interfaces, I don't really like the rest of it because it is somewhat difficult to understand. I have programmed in various languages and I still don't understand most of this tutorial. I did some searching and came up with a good tutorial for Java beginners. If you already have a background in C++ (or a similar object-oriented class-using language) you can jump straight into this one. Otherwise, I would suggest reading about classes in Sun's tutorial before trying this one.

Another great resource that I have found is Gamelan. This site has plenty of links to all kinds of Java related stuff. My favorite part is the reference library. They have quite a few books about Java (including a few "Learn in 21 days" books) which you can read FREE through their website. Although it seems that most of the longer code examples are omitted from these online versions, there is still plenty of material that is useful. They also have links to lots of IDEs and code example sites. A great site.

I would suggest also for the beginning programmer that you get an integrated development environment. These are very helpful. These environments (generally) give you a place to write your code, compile it, and run it without going to a bunch of different directories and using a bunch of weird commands. Since Microshaft's J++ is a bit over-priced and probably a bit more than what's necessary for a beginner, it's safe to just go with one of the free environments. They do all you'll need for a very long time. By the way, the tools listed below are for Windows.

Kawa is a great IDE for Java. I have used Micro$haft's Java IDE and Kawa is extremely similar to it. The two have very similar shortcut keys, a similar layout, and similar functionality. The major difference is that Kawa is shareware and it works with the JDK. If you have a copy of the JDK documentation stored on your computer, Kawa uses it to provied context-sensitive help. Definitely worth a download.

I've tried a few of the free Java integrated development environments floating around, and one of the best (and most bug-free) is FreeJava. It has a built-in editor, along with options for HTML files and built-in compiling and running of Java applications and applets. The error window has Microshaft's feature of allowing you to double-click on a compile error and be taken to that line in the code, which is kinda helpful. This link is a direct download from my page, partly because I think this program is worth the server space, and partly because the address in the readme file doesn't seem to work.

Another Java tool I used to use is Bluette. This is an integrated environment that works with JDK, allowing you to edit, compile, and run your programs from one place. The only problem I have with it is that (from my experience) compilation errors are not shown when compiling from inside Bluette, but there's probably some way to change that. Even so, it's still better than some other (free) development environments I've seen so far so it's worth a try.