It is A Good Idea for Computer Science students to know how to use a command-line. CSC173 is the perfect opportunity to learn that before your more advanced core courses and electives that require it. Carpe diem.
Possible to have both Java and C components in one instance of Eclipse, but not obvious how to do that reliably (YMMV)
Documentation is as good as you would expect from Eclipse
Not recommended (January 2022) for CSC173 unless you know what you are doing and/or get some help setting it up properly for CSC173 including the required compiler options.
Note: Check that the compiler options are properly set for CSC173. For other platforms you will need to set them since Eclipse stores them differently in the project on different platforms
Not hard to set required compiler options for CSC173 (see my detailed notes), but super-important to set them or your programs will almost certainly not meet the requirements for CSC173
Recommended (practically required) for Mac development in general, but perhaps not the best tool for the beginning C programmer