h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is their any way to learn Java free without downloading a compiler.

Probably, but I never succeeded. And I bought a *lot* of books...

Most definately. Sun (who are the main people behind Java) have a set of turorials here : <./>http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/</.> And theres lots of other useful stuff on their site (including the whole Java collection of files you might need to download).

And there is a free online Java compiler here : <./>http://www.innovation.ch/java/java_compile.html</.>

For some reason its not loading up at the moment, but thats the first time I've seen it go down, so it should be up by the time you see it.

Though if you're not going to get the Java interpreter, then you may want to investigate java applets (requires a slightly different set of instructions, but you can do some fairly impresive graphics with it - well in comparison to the DOS only version) - as you can then run your files through Internet Explorer.

Anyway, good luck, and if you need any more help please ask

"through Internet Explorer"

I should say through any web browser... bad habits...

I sort of know C++, so it reckons I will be alright, and the IDE apparently can be used for C++ somehow, so I will be able to see my programs.

First problem though, which java for netbeans, will need to install netbeans, will javaEE do it.

What a nightmare, got netbeans and my system wouldn't recognise it, a 200mb download, eh I remember this sort of thing from the past, then sun expected you to know class paths and a bit of dos programming just to get the thing to work. Thats why I did fortran and C++.

So undaunted I get JDK and find my security chewing on it, so it didn't install right, but I did get it working to find it's a command line application. What use is that in web development, graphical interfaces ect, and since java is pretty much useless outside of the web, to me anyway I will reinstall my Borland and stick to C++.

Well, apart from that on uninstalling java I found 5 gigabytes of programs, 2 of them which I thought was rather large. But I couldn't uninstall one of them, no uninstaller so I deleted it. It took several attempts aswell.

What a day, thanks for the help though