Learning Java, 5th Edition

Appendix A. Code Examples and IntelliJ IDEA

This appendix will help you get up and running with the code examples found throughout the book. Some of the steps here were mentioned in Chapter 2 but we want to go through them a little slower here with specific details on how to use them inside the free Community Edition of IntelliJ IDEA from JetBrains.

We also want to reiterate that IntelliJ IDEA is not the only Java-friendly integrated development environment out there. It’s not even the only free one! Microsoft’s VS Code can be quickly configured to support Java. And Eclipse, maintained by IBM, remains available. And for beginners looking for a tool designed to ease them into both Java programming and the world of Java IDEs, you can check out BlueJ created by King’s College London.

Grabbing the Main Code Examples

Quite apart from what—if any—IDE you use, you’ll want to grab the code examples for the book from GitHub. While we often include complete source listings when discussing particular topics, many times we have left out things like import or package statements or the enclosing class structure for brevity and readability. The code examples aim to be complete so that you can pull them up in an editor or IDE to review them, or compile them and run them to help reinforce the discussions in the book.

You can visit GitHub in a browser to meander through the individual examples without downloading anything. Just head to the learnjava5e repository. (If that link doesn’t work, just ...