Stuart Howard wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am a Gentoo user with an urge to try my hand at coding, java seems
> to fit the bill as a language that has cross platform appeal and so
> on, you guys know the rest.
>
> My question is this, I want to spend my time learning the language not
> the various apps that allow me to do this so what would your
> recommendation be for a new starter such as myself.
> I seem to have a choice of using either blackdown or the sun packages,
> I have read sufficient to realise that the blackdown project was the
> original linux port of Sun's Java but Today what would you suggest as
> the platform to pick ie. is the Blackdown package well supported under
> Gentoo? will updates come promptly when considered stable? or the the
> Sun package better supported? and for that matter as a new user would
> I be better of with one or the other for a reason I have not yet come
> too?
>   
Blackdown is as well supported as Sun on Gentoo, as far as JDK/JREs go. 
The common belief is that Sun is faster than Blackdown, but I've never 
seen any hard numbers. Aside from that, they should be functionally the 
same.
> Next up would be an IDE, is Kdevelop good for java or is netbeans a
> good choice? again your experiance would be helpful at this stage, the
> netbeans site seems to imply that they provide functinality not
> available elsewhere will this mean that my code [once I get there ;) ]
> be specific to netbeans? or should I go for a fundamentalist approach
> and stick to "simple" approach and trusty vim?
>   
I've heard good things aboug BlueJ [1] for an IDE for a beginner. The 
idea is that you use that while learning the language, and then 
eventually ween yourself off of it onto a more full-fledged IDE, like 
netbeans or eclipse. Unfortunately, we don't have a package for it yet.

I personally live and die by Eclipse. It has a lot of functionality 
built-in, in addition to the multitude of quality third-party plugins.


> Any Gentoo/general points will happily received
>   
You may want to use ~arch keywords for your Java packages.There hasn't 
been a lot of stablization going on recently, but this is something we 
are currently working on.
> stu
>
> ps. You may wonder why I dont just read the websites, well what can I
> say but I am doing but inevitablly websites lead to a slanted view,
> after all people have spent their valable time to put it up there so
> of course they prefer there approach whereas as a list will grab a
> broader view on the subject.
>
>   


- Josh
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