Thank you so much for this response. Completely agree with everything you're saying.
I was getting quite sad about the other responses. It feels a lot like survivorship bias to me. Kinda like "I suffered through this, so others should also be able to suffer through it".
I don't see why everyone else here seems to think it's fine to put students through this hell.
I think the alternative is buying proper laptops for about 1000$. Let's say they're good for about 4 years, that's $250 per participant (it's a yearly course).
Definitely in the budget. It's just that my boss thinks it's not necessary.
Thanks for your suggestion. I think not using an IDE isn't the best idea, since then they've never used it when they start their first job. They're complete beginners. While I agree it's important to understand the fundamentals (and I do in fact teach them how to compile just with javac), I also think it's important to be familiar with modern tooling.
I was getting quite sad about the other responses. It feels a lot like survivorship bias to me. Kinda like "I suffered through this, so others should also be able to suffer through it".
I don't see why everyone else here seems to think it's fine to put students through this hell.