I find the best way to learn a new programming language is to dive right in. They are all basically more or less the same, so it is just a case of learning what is unique to that language.
Let Google be your friend and copy other people's work at first (innocently), start to modify it and soon you will get the hang of doing it yourself.
Eclipse really isn't that hard, in fact it is awesome because it is so good at realtime error checking and has a lot of cool features that make it much easier to code.
As a base to start with, I suggest creating a jar that you can run with a console, via a Batch file.
In Eclipse (presuming you know the basics of Java) create yourself a new workspace, add to it a new Java project.
Give the project a name and confirm it.
Create your package (by standard it is the reverse of your website plus the project name - ie com.google.project).
Create your main class, add the method:
Code:
public static void main(String[] args) {
// start it here
}
Add all the java/classes/packages etc that you want to.
Go to File>Export
Select JAR file.
Select the required resources.
Skip the next screen.
Select your main class.
Find where the jar file saved to.
Create a new text file in the same folder with this as its contents:
Click here to view, I had to paste it externally as I get a 500 bad request error otherwise
Replace "Title goes here" with your title, replace "Name_of_JAR" with the name of the jar and save.
Rename the text file to "RUN.bat".
Double click it and you will get a cmd window which can utilise System.out and System.in textually.
Sorry if that seems wrong to you, but I jut started properly learning Java yesterday.
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I have mostly moved on from Alice, but may still respond to messages if important [¬º-°]¬