Strongly disagree about the IDE part. At so many places I've been it's been the complete opposite problem. Most developers are using notepad++, or at best vscod

Strongly disagree about the IDE part. At so many places I've been it's been the complete opposite problem. Most developers are using notepad++, or at best vscode without any plugins or custom config. When you ask them to put a breakpoint somewhere you get a puzzled look back: "what's a breakpoint?". They don't even know that debuggers exist!! Instead they add printf all over the place, recompile and rerun. Mind you these are people whose CV claim 5+ years of experience. It's terribly ineffective. University should teach the fastest way to iterate logic, Being able to pause your code, introspect the data and then step through it slowly line by line is the best way to really understand and learn the theory of what is going on. Autocomplete is also a fantastic inspiration on what else that's possible to do that's not covered in your lab handouts. How to import libraries and configure your build system will come later by necessity and will have changed by the time you start your next project. Knowing that debuggers exist and how to use them is a more general knowledge and it's something you have to be shown first before you miss it, (if Henry Ford asked what people wanted they would have said faster horses). Build systems and compiler flags can also be very challenging and uninspiring to understand before you even know what a linked list is. As someone else said below, after decades of experience i still have problems understanding the intricacies of CLASSPATH, or PYTHONPATH, ask a student to get this right and they'll just blindly copy-paste the first answer from stackoverflow so they can continue their printf-debugging session and finish their assignment before deadline.