In-IDE Programming Courses: Learning Software Development in a Real-World Setting
Anastasiia Birillo, Ilya Vlasov, Katsiaryna Dzialets, Hieke Keuning, Timofey Bryksin
TL;DR
This paper investigates learning software development inside professional IDEs using the JetBrains Academy plugin. Through eight structured interviews and qualitative analysis, it shows that the in-IDE format offers a realistic environment and enables use of debugging, code analysis, and navigation features, while highlighting gaps in guidance, setup, and dependence on external help or AI tools. The findings inform course design, plugin development, and future research on integrating IDE toolchains into programming education. Overall, moving learning into the IDE has strong potential to strengthen practical skills, provided it is well integrated with IDE capabilities and pedagogical support.
Abstract
While learning programming languages is crucial for software engineers, mastering the necessary tools is equally important. To facilitate this, JetBrains recently released the JetBrains Academy plugin, which customizes the IDE for learners, allowing tutors to create courses entirely within IDE. In this work, we provide the first exploratory study of this learning format. We carried out eight one-hour interviews with students and developers who completed at least one course using the plugin, inquiring about their experience with the format, the used IDE features, and the current shortcomings. Our results indicate that learning inside the IDE is overall welcomed by the learners, allowing them to study in a more realistic setting, using features such as debugging and code analysis, which are crucial for real software development. With the collected results and the analysis of the current drawbacks, we aim to contribute to teaching students more practical skills.