> full teams can and have built huge java projects just by using the intellij project wizard and maybe a tiny bit of Gradle from stack overflow.
I would not ever want to work with anyone from those types of teams. They are the kind of programmers who have a very narrow range of abilities, and whenever they see a problem outside those abilities, they get completely lost.
> But this is stuff that should come in later classes, particularly for students who are interested in those details. Not everyone needs to know it.
Yes, they do. They absolutely do. There seems to be this mindset that's starting to infect software development that pushes the idea that people can be good at programming computers without actually knowing anything about how those computers work. I just do not understand how anyone could seriously believe that. My experience over the past 20+ years tells me that people who avoid learning about these topics are generally just not good at their jobs, or at best can do a decent job of things, but then completely freeze when they encounter something outside of their narrow comfort zone.
> In fact my experience is that some colleges have the exact opposite problem: they teach students old tools and techniques
That's lame, but has nothing to do with the point you're trying to make.