Why not use an GUI editor or IDE?
Often times students do their work remotely on the EWS machines using SSH. In this situation, you can’t open a GUI-based editor or IDE (without doing a lot of work to set it up). For example, if you go to office hours and don’t bring a laptop, you’ll have to remotely connect to the EWS machines using the windows boxes in the office. If all you ever used was Eclipse then you’ll struggle to be effective in this situation. If you only know how to use a GUI based svn client, it will be hard to checkout or commit code in this situation. Also if all you ever learned in school was how to use an IDE that manages such things as compilation for you, then you won’t be prepared when you start working on a project written by someone else that uses Makefiles. Also, you won’t be prepared when a pair-programming partner uses a terminal-based environment for development. IDEs often hide certain details that are useful to know and, in my opinion, its not a bad idea to learn how to program without one. A
