I'm sorry but I'm forced to respectfully disagree with this statement. IDE's are not a good idea for people who are still learning a language. I've said it before & I'll say it again - you never learn how to code faster than by doing hand to hand combat with the command line: be it with an REPL, interpreter, or compiler.

An IDE can become a crutch for someone still learning syntax - especially with code completion tools. For someone who knows what they're doing - they're power tools.

I know there are plenty of people who still say things like: "real men use vi" I too love vi. I use it all the time - at the command line, to do fast corrections or configurations. To do heads-down development I use IDE's. (I'm a big fan of Eclipse & I too use EPIC) Why? I have found that they can help me be more productive. If you don't find any benefit from using them - by all means don't. But neither should anyone begrudge someone else for finding their own benefit in practicing different ways. (Not that I'm accusing you of that. I'm speaking generally.)

Further, of late there has been more work done in the merging of Modelling applications with IDE's. In OOP circles these days you find more and more UML functionality actually being tied to code generators & parsers, rather than simply drawing tools. This is also something that could easily become a misleading distraction to a beginner, but represents a powerful toolset to senior developers and architects.