INFSCI 2470 - Interactive System Design
(Spring 2005, CRN 17287)
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Course Tools
Teaching Tools
CourseWeb
The key tool for the course is the Pitt CourseWeb powered by Blackboard 5 Course
Management System, a product of Blackboard,
Inc. A set of course materials and tools is available on the CourseWeb
course site. You need to have Pitt University
Computer Account to login to CourseInfo site. Use Account
Managament Page to check the status of your account. We will use CourseWeb
for all communication during this course, to take quizzes and to submit solutions
for the assignments.
Java Development Tools
To complete the second part of the course you will need to write and debug Java
programs. To do that you need either
- an interactive development environment (IDE) for Java, such as Microsoft
J++ or Sun One Studio
- a text editor and tools to compile and run Java programs.
Using an editor and a compiler
An editor -- compiler/runtime environment pair is the simplest way to work with
Java. It is easier to use than any IDE, but this option provides little debugging
support. We do not recommend this option unless you have special reason to use
it. Here are some free software options for this way.
Sun Java Runtime Environment and SDK
SUN provides free set of development tools (that used to be known as Software
Development Kit) for all versions of Java. You can download the most recent version
(1.4) from Sun's Web site using the link below. Note that any earlier versions
starting with 1.2 will also work for the needs of the course (actually, 1.2 would
be best of all).
Program Editor
You can use any text editor that you are familiar with. For bare-bones editig
you can even use Notepad and Wordpad that belong to Windows accesoiries would
work (if you are using WordPad, make sure that your programs are saved as textfile
with suffix .java). If you want a little bit more comfort and functionality, use
one of the following free editors that are specially designed for editing programs.
Free IDEs
There are a number of Free Java IDE. From IS2470 prospect, it is meaningful to
use a SWING/GUI-oriented Sun Java One IDE - though it is not the easiest to learn
and to use.
Other IDEs for Java
There are a number of professional IDEs that you could use to design and debug
Java programs.You are welcome to use one of the professional IDE that are installed
in various SIS and Pitt Computer Labs: Microsoft J++ (A part of the Visual Studio)
or Borland JBuilder. You can get Microsoft J++ IDE as a part of the campus software
package. You also can use a professional IDE that is installed on your workplace.
A very extensive list of available Java IDE tools can be found at
JavaWorld.
Visualization Tools
Visualization tools will let you to look inside the working program. An IDE can
also do it for you, but a visualization tool could be better for a beginner.
Jeliot
Jeliot is a great visualization system for beginner-level programs . Jeliot works with Java, but for the language subset that we use for our course, there is a very
simple mapping from C to Java.
Copyright © 2005 Peter Brusilovsky
