[theWold]

"Would you suggest that someone completely new to programming start with a functional programming language like Erlang, Haskell, or Scheme instead of traditional, more imperative languages like Java, Python, and C?"

(OPs last paragraph)

I should of also added that Java is a good language to start out with due to schools teaching with that a lot, or the large portion of workforce that uses Java. So teaching functional programming (albeit Java is not strictly that) is doable using Java. But also has benefits of the AP test if OP and their kiddo are thinking college.