[missjellyfish]

Unpopular Opinion: IDEs suck when teaching people programming. A simple Text editor, the simpler the better, is all we need, combined with a compiler. Modern IDEs introduce a boatload of completely irrelevant concepts and complexity that just adds to the confusion. Doesn't matter which one you use.

If I was to design a CS101 course, I'd do away with Java (which is the language of choice at my university) as well. I don't know what would be the replacement; vala looks nice but the resources are lacking. My main points in choosing a language to teach would be that I can do OO in it while not needing everything to be encapsulated in classes. Also, the language shouldn't care about whitespace, because if I'm teaching a few hundred students, I'm not going to debug a boatload of mixed tabs and spaces issues.

Also, my CS101 course would be about debugging as much as about programming. Including stuff like "here is some source code, that's the observed bug, submit a corrected version by midnight x-y-zzzz and describe how you debugged it in bullet points". Unfortunately, plagiarism on these types of assignments makes them very much useless in the real world where grades depend on that.

[SkyMarshal]

Your opinions aren't unpopular, though maybe old school (in a good way):

https://blog.osteele.com/2004/11/ides

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java...

[solidasparagus]

> A simple Text editor, the simpler the better, is all we need

> I'm not going to debug a boatload of mixed tabs and spaces issues

As someone who uses an IDE, I have literally never had to worry about tabs vs spaces.

[missjellyfish]

The problem isn't using one consistently, in self-written code, but students will copypaste small snippets from somewhere. While python recommends using spaces for everything, more than enough code exists that uses tabs. Now; not every IDE is smart enough to actually convert everything to whatever is set. It may work for PyCharm or VS Code, but then again, I specifically do not want to endorse any program.

Edit: Or put another way - if my CS101 course has about 500 participants (which is not unreasonable in Europe), even 1% with whitespace problems will keep you busy and from answering questions that provide real insight and understanding. Because, after all, while learning to distinguish a tab and n spaces is a valuable life skill, it's entirely not my point while teaching how to think when programming.