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.

翻译：尽管学习编程语言对软件工程师至关重要，但掌握必要的工具同样重要。为此，JetBrains近期发布了JetBrains Academy插件，该插件为学习者定制集成开发环境（IDE），使教师能够完全在IDE内创建课程。本研究首次对这种学习形式进行了探索性调查。我们对完成至少一门该插件课程的学生和开发者进行了八次一小时的访谈，询问他们对此形式的体验、所使用的IDE功能以及当前存在的不足。研究结果表明，在IDE内部学习总体上受到学习者的欢迎，使他们能够在更贴近实际的环境中进行学习，并使用调试和代码分析等对真实软件开发至关重要的功能。基于收集的结果以及对当前缺陷的分析，我们旨在为培养学生更具实践性的技能做出贡献。