[masnick]

I absolutely agree.

This was in 2009, so today's obvious alternatives to Java (Ruby or Python) were not as popular.

However, it should be noted that for the course I mentioned, the friction of getting started in Java was not an issue: there were only 20 people in the class and we all lived in the same dorm so people could get help when they needed it.

[imd]

Sure, Python is even more popular today, but it showed up frequently in /. "what language should I learn programming with" threads in at least as far back as 2005. I seem to remember much earlier.