Prezi versus Sway

Prezi and Sway are both web-based presentation software that are available to use for free. Subscriptions are available for Prezi starting at €5 for the standard plan, and up to €19 per month for the Premium plan, whereas Sway is free to anyone with a Microsoft account.

Prezi

Pros

• Has the option to make presentations, infographics and video

• Can convert existing PowerPoint documents

• Lots of resources for learning how to use Prezi

• Can go full-screen

• Has AI assistance

• Can create videos within Prezi, instead of recording externally.

Cons

• More complicated/intimidating for a first-time user with no technical background

• AI assistance isn't the most helpful

• Subscriptions to access more features

Sway

Pros

• More intuitive

• Less confusing

• Converts Word, PowerPoint and PDFs

• Uses auto-generated templates based on a prompt

• Completely free

Cons

• Visually boring when editing

• Full screen isn't really fullscreen

• Can't record videos internally, must be uploaded separately

Which one you choose depends on your requirements and your budget.

If you want to go that extra mile, then buying a Prezi subscription might be something to consider, but overall, its free features are enough for most presentations. Exporting a file to PDF is only possible with a subscription, as well as analytics, so for that alone, I wouldn't recommend it over Sway.

As a student, I would recommend Sway as it's completely free, therefore nothing is behind a paywall and is completely accessible. As I mentioned, it is less aesthetically pleasing, but it gets the job done and is fairly easy to use.

Both require you to set up an account to use the software.

So overall, I would recommend Sway over Prezi.

TextPad was the first IDE I used for writing Java code in college. Some of the cons were that the program itself wasn't very intuitive and it wasn't very aesthetically pleasing.

Unlike most other IDEs, TextPad does not have any intuitive tools to assist with coding. It doesn't autofill and it doesn't make suggestions (although it does indent text automatically...).

As you can see from this screenshot, TextPad is not the prettiest IDE, although that's not necessarily a good reason to disregard this particular program, but when you're coding for hours every day, at least you can choose a prettier IDE to look at.

Unlike with Eclipse, all the constructors in my code had to be typed in manually, which is a waste of precious coding time. Errors can be quite vague too, leading to difficulty figuring out the problems with your code.

It is perhaps not a beginner-friendly program, but at the same time using it as a beginner can be beneficial since there is no help from the IDE. TextPad doesn't hold your hand, it never helps you complete your code, so it's up to you to really understand what you're doing.

In a time where we have ChatGPT and IDEs with IntelliSense, perhaps not having those tools helps us gain a deeper understanding of how to code, and that's the main reason I would suggest considering TextPad as your IDE of choice while you're still a novice.

It is ultimately up to you which one you wish to install, but for the purpose of this demonstration, I'll be installing JDK 17, specifically the x64 Installer for Windows, but you can also download it for Linux and MacOS.

You may have to create an Oracle account to download the installer, but that's quick and easy.

Once you click next and choose where to save your files, it will take a minute to install and then you'll see this box which you'll hit 'close' on.

Next, you need to choose the path, and you can do this by opening your control panel, going into 'Edit the system environment variables' and choosing the 'Advanced' tab.

Once in the 'Advanced' tab, you need to click on 'Environment Variables', which will open up this window where you will then choose Path:

This will open once you choose 'Path' and click 'edit'.

As you can see there are multiple paths on my device, however, yours will have fewer paths.

Once there, you click new and type in the following:

Finally, go back to system variables again and click 'path' - 'new' where you will name the variable JAVA_HOME and direct it to the bin folder again: %JAVA_HOME%\bin.

Once that's done, open the cmd prompt and type in java -version to see that you have Java installed.

Congratulations, you now have Java JDK 17 installed!

Developed by Eclipse Foundation and released in 2001, Eclipse is a free open-source software, primarily used for Java programming although it can also be used with other languages as well, by supporting additional plug-ins.

Widely used but not as stylish as Visual Studio, Eclipse makes up for it through intuitive autofill. The program suggests methods, lets you add setters and getters with the click of a button, and lets you see which classes and methods you have access to within a file.

An example of Eclipse offering a suggestion:

Although this isn't an error, Eclipse makes suggestions on where you could improve your code.

Generating Getters and Setters:

This saves the programmer from having to type out endless setters and getters and reduces the risk of making mistakes, such as spelling errors or using wrong return types.

As is seen in the image, line numbers can be turned on and off which is always helpful to identify where errors are.

Overall, Eclipse seems to be more intuitive, leading the programmer to be more productive and make programming less time-consuming. Eclipses intuitiveness is also beneficial to novice programmers since it makes so many useful suggestions.

Here's a video from the YouTube channel Coding with John about Eclipse shortcuts.

Visual Studio was created by Microsoft. The basic edition is free and supports many different built-in programming languages including C#, C++, JavaScript and CSS. It also allows the installation of several plug-ins, such as .NET MAUI. It can be used to develop websites, apps and computer programs.

Visual Studio uses IntelliSense which helps with code completion, saving the programmer from having to type too much, as words auto-complete. Syntax highlighting helps with any errors that might have gone otherwise unnoticed by the human eye.

Personally, I got to use Visual Studio in my 2nd year of college, using C and C# programming languages. So far, I consider Visual Studio to be the nicest IDE we’ve used, and if I were to work on a personal project, I would certainly choose Visual Studio to work with.

Because it is one of the most popular IDEs out there, there is a lot of support and tutorials available online to help with any issues that might arise.

Here's a video on how to get started in Visual Studio from their YouTube channel.

To tell you a little bit about myself and my coding journey; I first gained an interest in coding when I was doing a level 5 Games Design course.

During my time doing that course, I realised I preferred the coding aspects over the creative aspects and when I ultimately dropped out of that course for that same reason, I decided to continue learning programming in my own time, at my own pace through (mostly) free online resources.

I started off learning web design through FreeCodeCamp, and completed the Responsive Web Design certificate. Then, I continued on to do the JavaScript certification course. Of course, YouTube has always been a major source of help when learning any concept, and ChatGPT’s ability to explain code line by line has been a fantastic resource and one I would recommend to any beginner, (so long as you’re not relying on it too much!). I also began a 2D Game Developer course on Udemy which uses Unity and C#.

After a couple of years, and still having an interest in coding, I decided to go back to college to study Software Development, since I'd often heard that it was a good degree to have and a stable career path to pursue, so I went for it.

This was my first introduction to programming in Java, which has been challenging but fun. Although programming can be frustrating at times, I still feel excited to learn.

Now that I am in my second year of college, I've started learning C# and C programming (and still learning Java!), so perhaps in the future, I can give more tips about those languages.

So, by the end of the year, I plan to post three IDE reviews, a guide on how to install Java JDK, as well as a comparison review of two presentation software - Prezi versus Sway.