Just ran across this: http://damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_unreasonable_effectiveness_of_c.html
I went from java to c++ , thats the reason why I love java , its the middle child of the programming languages , it knows most things about its parents (c and c++) and also knows all the gossip on its siblings (c#,js etc) and it also knows a bit about that snotty weird kid that always acts in a strange way even under normal circumstances (python).
But java just makes it so much easier for beginners to pickup other languages , from personal experience in my class they are teaching them python , its great , if they just want to use python but then attempting to get them to use even a slightly more complex language and it just flops because of the hugely different syntax and the number of steps that they have to go through to get the same result, one of the kids said he tried to learn java but all the . operators and {} were confusing (a bit of an issue considering they are what most languages use). What do you guys think is a good language to teach new learners ?
BASIC.
Cas 
QFT!