Originally Posted by
Norm
It's not either/or, its when. Too early and the student won't learn the basics because the IDE does it all. Using a tool can make you a cripple, unable to function without it.
Another OFs opinion.
Basically if I have tried it once by hand - and understood it - then you are done with understanding those basics.
Myself I already forgot how to specify particular commandline parameters of the java compiler and here I can also understand the notepad-freaks, but: If it is done for me by the IDE, so who cares?