Thread: Can someone help me get started?

Hey, I am new to the world of programming; however I do know some of the basics. I took a programming class in college, unfortunately I didn't give it too much attention. Now, I really want to learn more about programming. In my college class, we used Java as our language, and we used BlueJ to write our classes and methods and such. I dl'd BlueJ to my computer however I've had problems with it finding Java to get it to run. I was wondering if you guys could help me get started with a good program to use. I'm not looking for anything to fancy, just some program I could use to learn the basics of programming.

Also, what is the advantage of learning Java over other languages? Should I invest some time in learning other computer languages as well?

I suggest you pick a language and focus your efforts on understanding that one language before you explore other programming languages. With that said, Java is a perfect language to get started. One good place to start is the Java Tutorials from Sun.

Personally, I have never used BlueJ so I cannot give you any insight on it. I've used both Netbeans and Eclipse, but I mostly use Eclipse now. Both IDE's are really good, but over time I have preferred using Eclipse.

You say Java Tutorials from sun? Actually, the problem I had with BlueJ is that it said I needed the latest version of Java (JDK) or something like that. I tried downloading it from sun, and I thought I had it. I got to the register screen, however for some reason it wouldn't let me register. I just skipped that and tried to open BlueJ up because I thought that I had the latest version of JDK downloaded. Do you have any idea of what might be happening?

Ok, I'll give Eclipse a shot! Thanks for the answer!