[hnthrow12345]

Thanks for your suggestion. I think not using an IDE isn't the best idea, since then they've never used it when they start their first job. They're complete beginners. While I agree it's important to understand the fundamentals (and I do in fact teach them how to compile just with javac), I also think it's important to be familiar with modern tooling.

[rgoulter]

Using vim or emacs instead of an IDE is more 'hardcore' than it is second-class to IDEs.

I could see it be a disadvantage to use vim/emacs for the use case of debugging.. but, the last thread I saw on debugging on HN had about half the replies say they just do printf debugging because they can't figure out how to setup debugging.