Yes, i also suggest you to go for a plain editor like Notepad.
The next step is you can go for
editors (not IDEs) which helps by highlighting the syntax aspects of the language so that you can find out if you do a mistake on the syntax part. The examples are like
EditPlus, Notepad++, TextPad etc. I can suggest for this once you are through with the basics and somehow comfortable with the APIs.
The next is
IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) which helps you with several features as context sensitive help (by placing a dot on an object, it fetches all the accessible members of it {members include both member variables and methods}, by facilitating you to navigate to different parts of programs, easy building etc etc. The examples include
Eclipse, Netbeans, WebSphere Studio Application Developer, WebLogic.
Hope this give you an info about these tools in general.
then how do i transfer that stuff in the notepad file to the compiler i appreciate any and all help even if it deals not with the beerbottle class but to a game or other application
You can just select all the contents by any of the two ways.
pressing "Ctrl+A" keys (selecting all text inside the opened file) together and again "Ctrl+C" keys (to copy) goto Edit Menu -> click on "Select All" option" and then again on Edit Menu -> "Copy" option Hope this helps you.
[ August 06, 2007: Message edited by: Raghavan Muthu ]