I’m a first year engineering student and I use J2SE 1.3 (I know, shocking!) in college to write code and Java SE 6 at home to write code. I just visited the Java website to manually download Java SE 6 update 24 and read that JDK 7 developer access is available for download. Now should I update to Java SE 6 update 24 (I’m using Java SE 6 update 23 right now) or should I go ahead and download JDK 7? Also, if I download JDK 7, does Eclipse support it or is the Netbeans IDE the only one to support JDK 7? I use Java only to make applications that are entirely textual and localised, no GUI or web involved. So is it worth choosing the developers edition over the stable edition?
Edit: I use Eclipse Helios v3.6.2 + Java SE 6 update 23 at home and Kawa IDE (no clue which version) + J2SE 1.3 in college
I will advise you to go for stable version as you are a student. JDK 7 is still in preview release. So just download stable version and learn Java first then you should go for preview release.
As for the IDE I will suggest you to use Eclipse. I don’t know whether they have announced support for JDK 7 or not. But it will affect you. Eclipse support JDK 6.
Just go for Eclipse + JDK 6.