Notes from Week #2

Today I talked about Lab 2, giving clarifications and hints (as posted on the previous entry). I also presented a problem similar to Lab 2.

The problem is to write 2 classes SnowMan.java and SnowManApp.java so that SnowManApp will show 2 snowmen on the screen, one without a hat and the other with a hat.

We did the problem together on the board. Those who attended the discussion may have got a handful of hints for Lab 2 (due this Friday). Those who did not attend can come to my office hours tomorrow (Thurs: 12-3pm @ Phelp 1413) if they have questions.

Notes from Week #1:
Last week, we talked about different editors & IDEs you can use to develop your java program. I do not remember the full list, but popular ones (in my opinion) are listed here:

• Text Editors
  
• NotePad, DOS' edit
  Simple, fast, already available on your machine
  
• TextPad
  Available on the labs' machines. If you want to use it on your machine, you will have to buy.
• Crimson Editor
  Very nice, freely available at http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
  You can also use this tool to print out your code very nicely.
  
• Integrated Development Environment (IDEs)
• Eclipse
  Very popular, freely available at http://www.eclipse.org/
  You can use it for other programming languages, too.
• NetBeans
  My choice. Specially designed for Java. Freely available at http://www.netbeans.org/
  It has a very nice GUI editing tool.
• BlueJ
  Freely available at http://www.bluej.org/index.html
• DrJava
  A lightweight IDE.
  Freely available at http://www.drjava.org/
  A light (Thanks to Kelly for her recommendation.)