Introduction to Java Programming 2010–2011 — BlueJ

The course uses Java Standard Edition 6 (as is currently installed on the university's DICE system — the computers in the university labs), and the interactive Java programming environment BlueJ:

By a “programming environment” we mean an application that you use for writing Java programs. There are many different programming environments for Java. BlueJ was developed at a university for the purpose of teaching introductory object-oriented programming. You will need to download and install BlueJ on your DICE account, see below.

Later on (for your second assignment) you may optionally transition to the fully-featured Java environment NetBeans. NetBeans 6.7 is already installed on the DICE machines, but you will probably want to add the NetBeans BlueJ plugin.

All of the software used by the course is freely available. If you want to use your own computer as well as the DICE machines, you should download and install Java, BlueJ and (optionally) NetBeans.

Installing BlueJ

BlueJ is free; you must download and install it on your DICE account or on your laptop or home computer. To install BlueJ on your own computer follow the instructions on the BlueJ site. These instructions are for your DICE account:

• Open up a terminal by clicking on Applications (in the top-left corner of the screen), then Accessories then Terminal.
• Download the BlueJ jar file by typing this command in the terminal and pressing return:

  :::bash
  wget http://www.bluej.org/download/files/bluej-302.jar
  

  You should see something like this in the terminal:

  :::bash
  [rydell]s0xxxxxx: wget http://www.bluej.org/download/files/bluej-302.jar
  --2010-09-13 15:31:52--  http://www.bluej.org/download/files/bluej-302.jar
  Resolving www.bluej.org... 129.12.3.236
  Connecting to www.bluej.org|129.12.3.236|:80... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
  Length: 5378729 (5.1M) [text/plain]
  Saving to: `bluej-302.jar'
  
  100%[======================================>] 5,378,729   1.32M/s   in 3.9s    
  
  2010-09-13 15:31:57 (1.32 MB/s) - `bluej-302.jar' saved [5378729/5378729]
  
  [rydell]s0xxxxxx:
  

• Now to install BlueJ type this command into the terminal and press return:

  :::bash
  java -jar bluej-302.jar
  

  After a second you should see this window pop up:

  

• Click Install then Done.
• Now to run BlueJ click on Places (in the top-left of the screen), then Home folder, then open the bluej folder, then double-click on the bluej file, then click Run. After a few seconds you should see this BlueJ window:

  

• You can create a shortcut to launch BlueJ by dragging the bluej file up to an empty area of the grey panel at the top of your screen. When the Create Launcher window pops up just fill in the Name field with “BlueJ” then press OK.
• You no longer need the BlueJ jar file, so you can delete it:

  :::bash
  rm bluej-302.jar
  

• Lastly, you will need the BlueJ projects from Objects First with Java. Download this zip file and extract it somewhere in your home directory.

NetBeans

If/when you decide you wish to try out a professional development environment, you may switch to NetBeans and use the BlueJ plugin for NetBeans, as described in these instructions. Note that BlueJ is highly recommended for the first half of the course.

Version 1.3, 2010/11/02 16:52:11