Anecdotally, I tried to teach myself programming in the summer before starting University. I went with Python since it's available by default on Linux, and managed to get a little CLI board game with a main loop that asked the user for their move, updated the game's state and printed the new board.
One of the first CS courses at University was OOP in Java. I really struggled to grasp OOP, for most of the first year. It didn't "click" until I tried doing it in Python; after that I went down the rabbit hole into meta-object protocols, Smalltalk/Self/Newspeak, etc.
Java seems to occupy the opposite of a sweet spot: it makes learning difficult for newcomers, yet it's very limited and restrictive for those with experience. Not only is it overly verbose and ceremonious compared to untyped languages like Python, but also compared to ML/Haskell, whilst being less expressive and less safe!
One of the first CS courses at University was OOP in Java. I really struggled to grasp OOP, for most of the first year. It didn't "click" until I tried doing it in Python; after that I went down the rabbit hole into meta-object protocols, Smalltalk/Self/Newspeak, etc.
Java seems to occupy the opposite of a sweet spot: it makes learning difficult for newcomers, yet it's very limited and restrictive for those with experience. Not only is it overly verbose and ceremonious compared to untyped languages like Python, but also compared to ML/Haskell, whilst being less expressive and less safe!