Eclipse and Maven configuration.

Download Java and install it in your computer.

As you know you can even write your java code with command line and a txt editor but its not a good idea to develop a software. So there are some good Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like :-

1) Eclipse

2) Netbeans

I prefer eclipse but it depends on you. Both are good and user friendly and both are open source and will be.

So download eclipse from above link.

What is Apache Maven ?

It is a build automation tool mainly used for Java projects. As we know that sometimes we need to use 3rd party jars. So we go to google.com and download that .jar file and then add that .jar file to our Java project.

But now a days this is not a good idea to deal with .jar files. So Apache Maven is used. When you create maven project in eclipse it generates pom.xml file for your maven project. So you just add dependency for that .jar file with version info and maven will download and add to your class path automatically.

Why Apache Maven ?

As you have seen how jar files can be used easily with maven then who thinks to download manually rather than automatically. As Maven downloads jar files automatically so more and more developers love to use it rather then tradition way. Also it is easy to use maven in eclipse using m2e eclipse plugin that you can get from eclipse market place.