[sumtechguy]

The college I went to they would bundle these sorts of classes into other ones. For example my 'C' class was also a how to get around in unix class and it was 1 day a week. But they also had pre-reqs so you had to have the 3 other classes first before you could do that one. So they could assume a particular level of education. When you are on your 2nd or 3rd language sometimes you are not sure what is important in a new one. So sometimes it takes a bit longer to learn. Now having a few under my belt I have a good idea which bits to look at first in a language. If all you knew was java and it was 1-2 classes of it, then being dumped into lisp and picking it up in 2-3 weeks would be a challenge for many.

Java as a language is actually tiny. So are most languages. Most of the pain is in the tools, build chains, and libraries that go along with them. Also sometimes what works very well in one lang is a pain in another. For example the dictionary in python has no real equivalent in C, unless you use some lib or write something yourself. In java you would need a map or hashmap class and knowing it exists sometimes is the biggest hurdle. But at least it is in the std library. So sometimes those sharp edges bite students as they are first starting with new langs and have decent exp in another language.