In the computer labs on campus you will be using PCs running Windows. If you have a PC at home you will also be able to work there, provided you have the proper software installed. All of the software we will use is freely available for download over the Internet.

For purposes of comparison, or to illustrate some particular feature that may be difficult or impossible to illustrate on our platform, you may occasionally (or even often) want to run one or more of your Java programs on a different platform, such Linux or Macintosh, if you have access to one or both of these platforms. Java is supposed to be cross-platform, and is to a large extent, but there are sometimes exceptions to this ideal and they seem to arise when least expected. But, for the most part, you should be able to develop on one platform and expect the end result to run on the other, though you should ensure you are running the same version of Java.