The leading corporate players in Java are:
- Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com/)
- Invented Java; licenses it to others
- Develops, licenses, distributes:
- The Java Software Development Kit (Java SDK)
- The Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
- The Sun Developer Network (Java Technology)
- http://java.sun.com/
- A very rich source of Java resources for Java developers.
- Register there for free; it’s worth it! Recommended!
- java.com
- http://www.java.com/
- Here, you can download the latest Java SDK (Software Developer Kit), etc.
From 2009-2010, Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle Corporation. As a result, Oracle now owns Java. Most of the links to the various Sun-based Java sites will now redirect to the equivalent Oracle sites.
- NetBeans ( http://www.netbeans.org/ )
- A Java IDE written in Java
- Now owned by Sun, which offers free downloads of NetBeans, often combined with the Java SDK, at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp
NetBeans was developed by Sun Microsystems, who open sourced it. After Oracle acquired Sun, Oracle donated NetBeans to Apache, where it is now being developed.
- Eclipse ( http://www.eclipse.org/ )
- An IDE written in Java.
- You can download it for free from here.
- Written by IBM, and then contributed to the public domain, where it’s gaining a huge amount of support.
- Really a plug-in framework, which comes with the Java plug-in already installed.
- Additional plug-ins allow it to be tailored for just about anything you might ever want.
- IBM ( http://www.ibm.com/ )
- IBM Developer is well worth looking at, and registering at.
- IBM has made a major investment in Java technologies.
plus lots and lots of smaller players!