Working at Home

Java

  1. Download the latest Java 2 SDK from the Sun website.
  2. Download the latest version of BlueJ (or better yet, Netbeans).
  3. You can use BlueJ in the same way that you use it in the computer lab.

C++

  1. Download the latest version of MinGW.
  2. After installing MinGW, make sure to add the MinGW bin directory to your PATH environment variable.  For example, if you installed MinGW into C:\Program Files\MinGW, you must add C:\Program Files\MinGW\bin to the end of the PATH environment variable.  Under Windows XP, you can change your environment variables by following these instructions.  This will allow you to use g++ from the command line in the same way that you do on Unix.
  3. Go to the directory where you store your C++ (.cpp) files.  Use any text editor to create/edit your C++ source files (we recommend jEdit, but there are a lot of good ones out there).
  4. Compile your C++ source files into executables by using the command line.  To help get a command line for a given directory, you may want to download the Open Command Here Power Toy.  Note that the default executable under Windows is called a.exe, not a.out as on Unix.