Yea I put it into the same category with manual arch/gentoo installation. It’s definitely worth to do one time and understand the process. Then it’s up to you whether you want to have stuff that just works out of the box or you find pleasure in tinkering and customizing the environment along with trying to get things done

Yup that’s also true, I’ve hit the wall multiple times when trying to use vim/emacs. Now I’m in neovim and feel like I get a better understanding of buildsystems but I won’t say it’s something that everyone should start with. I don’t know what the C/C++ intellij is though. On windows it’s probably visual studio. On Linux maybe vscode but I’d say if op wants to try some morw serious ide then clion may be a better choice

There’s a learning experience to it though. When coding in intellij I’m just using writing some java without deep understanding how the build system works ans what’s done underneath. Setting up some nvim with lsp forces you to focus more on the whole process so I’d say it can be beneficial