"IDEs are very powerful but..... (From Rahul Chaudhary's Weblog) " via [Artima Weblogs]

One of the more controversial things in The Book Formerly Known As Thinking In C# is my "strong recommendation" not to use an IDE (specifically, Visual Studio) until at least one has reached the chapters on GUI programming, which are 3/4 of the way through the book. Although there's a lot to be said for bare-bones code, the downside is that the sample programs are generally simple console programs that seem far removed from "real programs."

I have been considering ways to bridge that gap: I have thought of building training material based on Terrarium but keep returning to an ever more radical thought: Wouldn't it be interesting to teach programming manipulating the world's most commonly used programs?