>and read the documentation This part stays intact either way though. You're not wrong that teaching students to run a couple of CLI commands is easier, but th

>and read the documentation This part stays intact either way though. You're not wrong that teaching students to run a couple of CLI commands is easier, but they still need to understand what they're doing, otherwise it can be just about as opaque as clicking a button in a graphical program. Considering the vast majority of them will be using IDEs if they are coding in Java professionally, personally I feel it is worth taking some extra time to at least give them a starting-off point and then letting them access the documentation that the IDEs themselves provide. Whether this comes after teaching them the basics of the language through the barebones text editor + CLI tools approach or is what they are taught from the ground up is a matter of choice.