All software you'll need for this class is both free and open-source.
Either Java 5 or Java 6 will do—if you have a choice, choose Java 6. Incidentally, Java, for marketing (rather than technical) reasons has a rather odd and wildly inconsistent naming “convention.” For instance, Java™ SE 6 (SE = Standard Edition) is synonymous with Java 1.6 and will often be called JDK 1.6 or JDK 6.
Visit the Java SE download page, scroll down to about the middle of the page, find the section Java SE Development Kit, and download the most recent version, which at the time this was written was JDK Update 16. The return to the main download page, scroll down a little further to the Additional Resources section, and download the Java SE 6 Documentation. Then follow the Installation Instructions.
The good news is that Java is already installed on your machine [the bad news is that Apple's releases significantly lag Sun's releases]. You'll need to be running OS X Tiger (10.4.x) or later. If you haven't done so lately, run software update to ensure you have the most recent version of Java installed on your machine. [FYI: here is the Java page on the Apple Developer Connection]
According to Apple, Java 6 is only “available on 64-bit, Intel-based Macs” (how to tell if your Intel-based Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit processor) running Leopard (10.5.x) or later. Use the Java Preferences utility to make it the preferred version. I recommend that you visit the Java SE download page, scroll down past the middle of the page, find the section Additional Resources section, and download the Java SE 6 Documentation and install it somewhere convenient.
Runs under OS X Tiger (and later) on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. I recommend that you visit the J2SE 5.0 Downloads, scroll down past the middle of the page, find the section J2SE 5.0 Documentation, download and install it somewhere convenient.
You're on your own here... see Sun's Java Installation Instructions for some tips. I recommend that you also download the documentation and install it somewhere convenient.
BlueJ is tool designed to help students learn object-oriented programming with Java. It has many cool features that we'll be using. BlueJ is itself written in Java and requires Java 5 or higher to run. Download and follow the the installation instructions.
Note: Windows Vista users must be running Java 6.
All the code examples from the textbook can be downloaded from the Object's First with Java website.
UMLet is a tool that I'll be using to make UML diagrams. Should you choose to use it—it is not required—download the UMLet 9.5 stand-alone file and unzip it to an appropriate directory. Requires Java 6 (or later).
To run, double click on the file umlet.exe
To run, double click on the file umlet.jar
You can run it from the command line using the
umlet.sh script (see the script for configuration
requirements). Depending on your desktop, you may be
able to run it with a double click on the file
umlet.jar