jIDEE is a free programming environment designed to satisfy the pedagogical requirements of introductory Java computer science and computer engineering courses. jIDEE functions as a wrapper around Oracle's Java Development Kit (JDK) and third-party text editors. It currently runs under Windows operating systems with versions for Linux and OS X in development.
jIDEE is currently released under the GNU General Public License v2.
Broadly speaking, there are two approaches taken toward programming environments in education. The first involves having students use professional grade, highly integrated development environments; the second eschews integrated development environments entirely and has students use general-purpose text editors for developing code and command-line tools for building and debugging programs. Each approach has its pros and cons.
jIDEE attempts to provide a development environment that combines the best of both worlds for first year computing courses. It has been designed as an easy to use though limited IDE that reveals the underlying structure of the code development process. We envision that after a developing programmer uses jIDEE for one or two semesters, the fundamentals of code development and project management will have taken root, and she or he will be ready for a full-fledged IDE.
Source code for the jIDEE project.
Code for building jIDEE binary installer(s).