Java Prep

This semester I am taking Enterprise Java at MATC. Overall, the course appears like it will focus more on working with Java within a simulated workplace environment then on specific aspects of the language. This is a good thing, as the language is so huge that learning a few more pieces of it won't make too much difference in the big picture. Still, I am sure we'll cover new topics such as XML parsing and more on JSPs.

The course instructor recommends using a laptop for this course, as we'll need to have our code repository, build tools, and IDE all set up, and the lab machines get reset every time they restart. Thankfully, I already have a laptop. I picked up one for school, and oddly enough this will be the first real school use it has seen, and I've had it for over a year.

The Compaq V2000 machine is running an AMD Turion M32 CPU and I have it set to dual boot between Windows and Ubuntu Linux. For this course, seeing as we'll be working with some Linux servers, I decided to set up the Java development environment on Linux.

There are a few things we'll need for class. Namely, the Ant build tool, Subversion for code management, the Apache web server with Tomcat, mySQL, and an IDE, which I'll be using EasyEclipse Server for.

Thankfully, getting everything installed is a fairly painless process thanks to Synaptic. A simple search through the package list let me install everything but EasyEclipse. For that, a painless download off their site yielded the desired app.

I don't have anything configured yet, nor do I have the Java EE 5 SDK installed, but hopefully we'll get that done and do a test run this weekend.