[DavidMcLaughlin]

Using Java as the language to detect if someone has the "programming gene" does not make any sense. There is so much cognitive overhead to writing a simple program in Java compared to, say, Python that there will be many other factors involved in why a student would end up performing badly.

In my own case I disliked Java so much in my first year of University because I couldn't understand why there was so much effort just to get this little black screen to print "Hello, World."

I would go on but I actually already wrote about this a couple years ago on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/84c90/i_fear_as...

[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.