No they aren't. It's appalling to me that high schools actually use Java for introducing a subject that requires immersion to be successful. Nobody sees "Hello World" or any other intro app in Java and thinks to themselves, "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if I spent hours on end making this compiler thingy happy." If students aren't actually making things they can use and play with, you're going to find very little adoption outside of the school-mandated time it takes to pass the next test. This is why Javascript, Ruby, Python, hell, even VB are so important.
1) Make them want to write code
2) Show them how to reason about the code (this is where CS classes should come in)
1) Make them want to write code 2) Show them how to reason about the code (this is where CS classes should come in)