HelloWorldSwing tutorial -- still in need of repair?

Question

hello, as a new SDN member, i may be posting this in the wrong place -- if so, please let me know where to re-post, and i'll do so.
yesterday, 3/22/2009, i was following the Swing tutorial at
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/start/compile.html
i followed the instructions as closely as possible -- i downloaded HelloWorldSwing.java and compiled(*) it with "javac HelloWorldSwing.java". But when i tried to run it with "java HelloWorldSwing", i ran into the same problem that user "_zee" described in a post on december of 2007, at http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=572888 . That is, following the instructions exactly, then trying to run the program leads to the following error:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: HelloWorldSwing (wrong name: start/HelloWorldSwing)
as _zee pointed out, this can be a show-stopper for first-time users of java.
later, in the same thread, bruce chapman responded and said he contacted the tutorial writers to notify them that the command line to run the program was incorrect. he also provided a solution which was to change the command-line to "java start.HelloWorldSwing".
unfortunately, i did not find that chapman's command-line solution worked for me. i still receive a
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: start/HelloWorldSwing
this is not because I had copied any files up from to a parent directory, as chapman had conjectured. It's just that there simply is no "start" subdirectory: I've only downloaded one file, and compiled it: the HelloWorldSwing.java file, as the tutorial directs. That's it.
however, while i am a novice to Swing, I'm not a novice to Java programming and packages, so chapman's suggestion helped me to see this was a simple package problem. The HelloWorldSwing.java program is saying (on line 32) that it belongs to the "start" package. So I commented out line 32 and recompiled the file and successfully ran it as the tutorial directs: "java HelloWorld"
unless i'm missing something obvious -- always a distinct possibility :) -- the line 32 problem in this tutorial is really unfortunate and, since many early Java programmers may go directly to the Swing tutorial since it's more fun/graphical, and do not not know how to fix the packaging error, this may have cut short many potential bright future careers in Java :-) as _zee quite rightly pointed out.  wouldn't it be helpful to fix it?
(*) compiler: Fedora 10 with Sun's jdk-1.6.0_02-fcs.i586

Answer 1

jastern wrote:
unless i'm missing something obvious -- always a distinct possibility :) -- the line 32 problem in this tutorial has probably cut short many potential bright future careers in Java :-) as _zee quite rightly pointed out.  wouldn't it be helpful to fix it?
I remember in Uni the first engineering course was designed to separate the wheat from the chaff -- to make as many people drop out as possible.
Recommended reading: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html]