When it comes to writing Java programs, you can use any text editor. However, we encourage you to use an integrated development environment (IDE) because they provide numerous features. IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, and NetBeans are the best of them. IntelliJ is a paid IDE, but you can use Eclipse or NetBeans, which are free.

We can use IDE to do the following:

• Manage Tomcat
• Develop apps and web apps where there is no need to remember the full name of the methods and signatures
• Highlight compile errors

In this book, we will work with Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA.
You can download the Ultimate version, which has a 30-day free trial, from https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/.

To download the Eclipse, visit http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/.

For Spring, you should download Eclipse IDE for the Java EE Developers version.

For both, once you start IDE, it will ask for a workspace. You can create a folder of your choice and give the path of that folder.