Notepad is definitely going too bare bones but when learning something new - particularly a new language or API - I always drop the IDE and use a good text editor. It forces you to look up and read the docs, type out things in full and generally think a bit more about the details of what you are doing rather than coding on IDE autopilot.
Usually, for IDEs that support it, though, they have docs (as Java to Javadoc) integrated, so you can read what they do.
Sure, it means you won't remember it, since you can just go straight to what you're looking for, but still, once you read a method/class' doc, you should know what it does (if the name/arguments weren't already enough of a hint for the puny brain reading the code).
Notepad is definitely going too bare bones but when learning something new - particularly a new language or API - I always drop the IDE and use a good text editor. It forces you to look up and read the docs, type out things in full and generally think a bit more about the details of what you are doing rather than coding on IDE autopilot.
Usually, for IDEs that support it, though, they have docs (as Java to Javadoc) integrated, so you can read what they do.
Sure, it means you won't remember it, since you can just go straight to what you're looking for, but still, once you read a method/class' doc, you should know what it does (if the name/arguments weren't already enough of a hint for the puny brain reading the code).
zealdocs.org/ is a great tool for docs. I think mac is dash docs. kapeli.com/dash