Setting Up Your Professional Development Environment (IDE)

Choosing Your IDE: An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a powerful tool that makes writing, compiling, running, and debugging code much easier. For Java, the three most popular choices are IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, and Visual Studio Code with extensions.

• IntelliJ IDEA (Community Edition): Highly recommended for beginners and professionals alike. It has excellent code completion, refactoring tools, and a user-friendly interface. We will use this as our primary example.

• Eclipse: A long-standing, powerful, and open-source IDE. It is highly extensible with plugins but can sometimes feel less intuitive than IntelliJ.

• Visual Studio Code (VS Code): A lightweight and fast code editor that can be turned into a powerful Java IDE with the right extensions (like the 'Extension Pack for Java' from Microsoft).

Step 1: Install the JDK: Before installing an IDE, you must have a JDK on your system. We recommend the latest Long-Term Support (LTS) version (e.g., JDK 21). You can download it from Oracle, or use an open-source distribution like Eclipse Temurin or Amazon Corretto.

Step 2: Installing IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition:

• Go to the JetBrains website and download the free Community Edition.

• Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions.

• On first launch, you can customize your theme and settings.

Step 3: Creating Your First Project in IntelliJ:

• Click on 'New Project'.

• Give your project a name (e.g., 'Java-Course-Projects').

• Select 'Java' as the language.

• For the JDK, IntelliJ should automatically detect your installed JDK. If not, click 'Add JDK...' and navigate to the directory where you installed it.

• Check the box 'Add sample code' to generate a simple Main class.

• Click 'Create'. IntelliJ will set up the project structure, including a src folder for your source code.

Mini-Exercise: Install the JDK and IntelliJ IDEA on your computer. Create a new project and run the sample main method to ensure everything is working correctly.

// The code generated by IntelliJ IDEA
public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello and welcome!");

        for (int i = 1; i <= 5; i++) {
            System.out.println("i = " + i);
        }
    }
}