Thread: Textpad Program Running Problems

I don't think textpad has direct support for running Java programs as a debugger. I took a quick google search on textpad, and it looks pretty much like a standard text editor without any debugging tools. I would strongly recommend switching to either Eclipse or Netbeans. Both of these are full blown IDE's for developing Java (and other languages, but mostly java) which have syntax highlighting, powerful refractors, really good debuggers, and in the case of Netbeans, a GUI designer.

Which you pick is really up to personal preference. I like using Eclipse because it's fast, but still has the powerful features that makes it a viable development platform. From what I've heard about Netbeans, the GUI designer is absolutely marvelous (I do use it from time to time), and it's made by the people who make Java, Sun Microsystems. Both IDE's have a massive support base, so pretty much all your questions about how to do something can be/have been answered.

The best part about both of these IDE's is that they are both completely free and open source, whereas the info I got from TextPad's webpage requires you to pay for it.

Are you using a windows, linux, or osx platform? If it's windows, running the standard JDK installer from sun's website and installing to the default location (usually C:\Program Files\java\jdk_version) should work. Eclipse requires no "setup" so to speak, just unzip and run.

If you're running linux, it's a little more complicated. The first thing I would try is finding the JDK and Eclipse on a repository with a software manager that is installed. Ubuntu and OpenSuse are two linux distros that I know for sure have these two items in their repository, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of others that do, too. If you can't find the software in the repository or your linux distro doesn't have a software manager that automatically installs software for you, you will have to install using the install procedures given at each of the respective websites (an uber pain, because you have to make sure you have all the dependencies and such)

If you're running an OSX platform (mac), there's not much I can do to help you since I don't own a mac and have never developed for one. I do remember one thing one of my professors did say, though, and that is that Sun's download of the JDK won't work, you have to go to apple's website and get the JDK from there (or maybe that's changed now, but knowing a bit about how apple software is distributed, I doubt it).