Seems like your complaint is against using IDEs early on and not Java. It's been awhile since my undergrad, but we used Java and text editor. We compiled with javac and ran the jars from the CLI.
Likewise. It hasn't been that long since I finished my undergrad (<5 years), and if I remember correctly, we didn't start using Eclipse until second year, and even then it was considered 'optional', i.e. as long as your code compiles and passes the test cases, it doesn't matter whether you use Eclipse, vim, Notepad, etc.
The upshot of this was that I didn't have a clue what Maven was until I started working, but you can learn tooling on the job.
It wasn't until the final year of my 4 year Software Engineering degree I used an IDE for the first time (Eclipse, actually) and I was totally disoriented, not understanding how all the magic was happening.
I consider the IDE's harmful magic don't get me wrong, and perhaps you were taught better than I was, but you still have classes and related incantations out of the gate (I would prefer a non-imperative language as an ideal starter, but I'd settle for a procedural over an OO)
