The installer launched. A clean, unassuming wizard. He clicked "Next." He accepted the license agreement—no one reads those. He reached the most critical screen: .

The terminal output: Nebula Inventory System v1.0 — Ready.

The page presented a matrix of possibilities. Java 22 (the latest), Java 17 (the LTS warrior), Java 11 (the ancient elder). His project was built on Java 17. He needed stability, not novelty.

Alex had a problem. A big, blinking, red-text-on-black-background kind of problem.

javac -version

He scrolled down in the System variables pane, found Path , and clicked .

He ran the program: java Main