Originally Posted by
mwildam
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?
You don't need to necessarily remember what all the commandline options are, as long as you know where to look to find them, and understand that commandline options are being used, and for what.
If any thing happens that you don't have the IDE in that moment (for whatever reason and it is not nearly as far-fetched as you might think) you will need to be able to use those command line options. And those that start with an IDE, or haven't ever actually used any of those commandline options but only did a very simple and straight forward compile from the commandline, don't know/understand them, and so are lost.
I.E. They must run something from the command line (or out of a script, as, eventually things move into production and so are not run out of an IDE) and the app needs more than the standard 64mb heap space. The developer has always simply set the option in the IDE and has never had to do this from the commandline, but now that is not applicable. He has no idea that this even
can be changed from the command line, or how to do it, all he has ever run from the commandline was his first helloworld. A large chunk of the "productivity" that he initially gained by immediately using an IDE, he loses now.