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Unpopular opinion: learning on a text editor beats an IDE when you're starting out
Everyone in my intro Python class last fall kept pushing me to grab PyCharm on day one, but I stuck with plain old VS Code with no extensions for the first month and it made a huge difference. When you type every line by hand without autocomplete finishing your sentences, you actually remember that a colon goes after an if statement and that indentation is not optional. I watched two friends in that same class copy-paste boilerplate from an IDE and then freeze on a simple quiz because they never had to think about basic syntax. My teacher even said the people who struggle most by week 6 are usually the ones who let the computer write for them early on. It took me maybe 3 extra hours the first week to type things out manually, and honestly those hours paid off way more than any tutorial video. I know this is not a popular take because IDEs save time and look professional, but saving time is not the point when you are still learning what a loop even does. Has anyone else tried going bare bones at the start, or am I just being stubborn about this?
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