April 15, 2019
Setting Up Java
Dev Kit, Eclipse, and Working in Command Prompt
Oracle – Java SE Development Kit 8 Downloads Eclipse Site
Basic Setup
As I’m preparing for a foundational programming course, I needed to get Java setup on my computer. This started with downloading the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Eclipse (an IDE package for working with Java). I had to make sure to run and install the JDK first, as Eclipse needed some of its components to setup initially.
I needed to do some work using the command prompt on Windows, and found I was having trouble using the javac and java commands. This turned out to be an environment variable issue (something I ran into similarly when starting Python). I was able to easily resolve this by checking the “Edit the System Environment Variables” section of my control panel and adding the path to the Java jdk bin file to my “Path” system variable.