I truly believe that IDEs like this one (including DrJava gag) ruined introductory programming courses. I don't think using a full fat IDE is good either. Usin

I truly believe that IDEs like this one (including DrJava gag) ruined introductory programming courses. I don't think using a full fat IDE is good either. Using an IDE from the beginning has resulted in many (maybe even most) of my peers not understanding what actually happens when they compile and run a program, just that they put some text in a box, then click the magic compile and run buttons and some text pops out of the magic output window. They have no concept of how to actually make a useful program or how to distribute said program and run it on someone else's computer. These are never taught, it's just assumed that you know how to do that (as well as be comfortable with *nix) by the time you get to 3000 and 4000 level classes. That isn't even to mention how Java just isn't a great first programming language. Thankfully I believe they just chaged the introductory programming courses at my university to use Python—probably not using nano and the command line like I'd prefer, but IDLE is okay I guess.