Section 5.2. All You Need, and Not One Thing More

5.2. All You Need, and Not One Thing More

These days, many programmers are what we affectionately call "tool junkies." They can only develop software with the support of complex integrated development environments, their supporting classes, and screen painting tools. By this, we do not mean to imply that we are Luddites. The right IDE can indeed be an enormous boost to productivity, but a programmer should be able to work with any tool. The Sun Java SDK is the lowest common denominator; if you can be productive with it, then you can be productive with absolutely any Java development environment. That makes your skills more portable. And that means more jobs are open to you. And that is good for you and your employers.

The Sun Microsystems Java SDK (formerly known as, and often still referred to as the Sun Microsystems Java Development Kit, or JDK) provides you with all the tools you need to compile, document, run, package, debug, and deploy Java applications and applets. It does this with a collection of purely text-based command-line tools. This is no-frills software development. But a lot of us crusty old types really like that.

You should become comfortable and familiar with these tools. Some IDEs are just fancy window dressing that calls these tools underneath (some are notsome have written their own Java compilers, for example). If you can use these tools comfortably to build any kind of Java program, then you know you have a mastery of the basics and are not "addicted" to a particular tool. You also know the "hardest" way to get the job done. This will help you to make good choices about tools that enhance productivity. Some tools, we find, actually slow you down or get in your way in some cases. If you know the lowest level, you can better recognize the merits and flaws of more advanced tools. Enough justification. On to the SDK.

Note

By the way, you will notice that we do not cover the installation of the Development Kit in this chapter. That is because we are deferring the discussion of installation for the next chapter, where we also introduce the concept of multiple concurrent Development Kits on a single box. See Chapter 6 for details.