You really shouldn't use notepad, it wouldn't even bother to catch any errors.
While it IS a nice tutorial, I'd recommend at the very least using VSCode. While it's mediocre for a lot of people (and I kinda like it), it at least has basic support for syntax highlighting, and intellicode.
For a beginner just wanting to test, yeah, it is nice, if you want to dip any further than "Hello, world!" though, you gotta at least install a bare bones IDE.
This wasn't necessarily for you (or here to make you feel bad), OP, this is more of a tip to anyone who's followed this, or is following this tutorial.
I have been working with VS Code, Inteli J, Eclipse and other tools too.. but when it comes to practice i always prefer notepad.. and yes you are also right...
You're probably missing the point. Nobody does any serious programming in notepad, but it's nice to have tried it once. So many people learn programming in an IDE and never develop any understanding for the tools that are doing the work behind the scenes.
Behind the scenes are important, but these day new mentors forgetting to mention that, and all the kids want to build cool AI, App, Website Project but when ask them how this thing work they be like click on that play button 🤣
I know this is off topic, but, whatever fucking happened to it just being the language, and the tools the language provided to you when you installed it (i.e. the command line tools).
Now, for things like Java, we have Maven, Gradle, and this other BS I just don't get the purpose of having.
Those tools are for libraries/package management, pretty much all languages have them. Python=pip, Javascript=npm, Java/Kotlin=Maven/Gradle, ObjC/Swift=Cocoapods, and so on. Essentially you write a dependency file with all the packages you need, and then sync. These tools will download everything for you. So if you need 10 jar lib files, it will be done for you without you having to manually download each jar and configure it in the project settings path. They might look like BS at first, but once you learned their purpose you'll never go back to manual downloading of libs.
They really matter when you have a big project, and you don't want to reinvent the wheel if a library is already built.
Notepad is definitely going too bare bones but when learning something new - particularly a new language or API - I always drop the IDE and use a good text editor. It forces you to look up and read the docs, type out things in full and generally think a bit more about the details of what you are doing rather than coding on IDE autopilot.
Usually, for IDEs that support it, though, they have docs (as Java to Javadoc) integrated, so you can read what they do.
Sure, it means you won't remember it, since you can just go straight to what you're looking for, but still, once you read a method/class' doc, you should know what it does (if the name/arguments weren't already enough of a hint for the puny brain reading the code).
You really shouldn't use notepad, it wouldn't even bother to catch any errors.
While it IS a nice tutorial, I'd recommend at the very least using VSCode. While it's mediocre for a lot of people (and I kinda like it), it at least has basic support for syntax highlighting, and intellicode.
For a beginner just wanting to test, yeah, it is nice, if you want to dip any further than "Hello, world!" though, you gotta at least install a bare bones IDE.
This wasn't necessarily for you (or here to make you feel bad), OP, this is more of a tip to anyone who's followed this, or is following this tutorial.
I have been working with VS Code, Inteli J, Eclipse and other tools too.. but when it comes to practice i always prefer notepad.. and yes you are also right...
"practice".
And even ignoring most advanced features, NotePad is very limited at Undo.
I recommend minimum Gedit or NotePad++. (or even Nano / Vim)
MS Word, yes someone do use, is OK at features, but bad at monospace and unformatted text. Even Markdown is better.
NotePad is substandard software to me.
You're probably missing the point. Nobody does any serious programming in notepad, but it's nice to have tried it once. So many people learn programming in an IDE and never develop any understanding for the tools that are doing the work behind the scenes.
Here's a short story to underline this point :D
Behind the scenes are important, but these day new mentors forgetting to mention that, and all the kids want to build cool AI, App, Website Project but when ask them how this thing work they be like click on that play button 🤣
I have yet to find a programming language where it's not beneficial to learn and use the commandline tools (compiler, interpreter, etc.)
Nice.
I know this is off topic, but, whatever fucking happened to it just being the language, and the tools the language provided to you when you installed it (i.e. the command line tools).
Now, for things like Java, we have Maven, Gradle, and this other BS I just don't get the purpose of having.
Those tools are for libraries/package management, pretty much all languages have them. Python=pip, Javascript=npm, Java/Kotlin=Maven/Gradle, ObjC/Swift=Cocoapods, and so on. Essentially you write a dependency file with all the packages you need, and then sync. These tools will download everything for you. So if you need 10 jar lib files, it will be done for you without you having to manually download each jar and configure it in the project settings path. They might look like BS at first, but once you learned their purpose you'll never go back to manual downloading of libs.
They really matter when you have a big project, and you don't want to reinvent the wheel if a library is already built.
What about compiling/running. That (by itself, not accounting for libraries) should be done through the langs VLI, right?
No? Why the fuck not, that's how it USED to work, and I still need to catch up, so let me use my "cave man" methods.
I completely agree. What baffles me though is how many college introductory programming courses still use Notepad to write source code in-class...
Notepad is definitely going too bare bones but when learning something new - particularly a new language or API - I always drop the IDE and use a good text editor. It forces you to look up and read the docs, type out things in full and generally think a bit more about the details of what you are doing rather than coding on IDE autopilot.
Usually, for IDEs that support it, though, they have docs (as Java to Javadoc) integrated, so you can read what they do.
Sure, it means you won't remember it, since you can just go straight to what you're looking for, but still, once you read a method/class' doc, you should know what it does (if the name/arguments weren't already enough of a hint for the puny brain reading the code).
zealdocs.org/ is a great tool for docs. I think mac is dash docs. kapeli.com/dash
Yeah I wouldn't make my worst enemy code in notepad, maybe notepad++, just maybe lol.
lol.