Other than the gazillions of people who program in it for a living, of course. (Though maybe familiarity has bred contempt for many of them?) But despite its industry dominance, I’ve heard a lot of sneering about Java’s suitability as a teaching language, because it fails in some sense as a platonic language ideal, despite being the actual language that many of those learning to program will be programming in. The comments on Java on this blog post on choosing a language for high school instruction are typical: “I’ve heard complaints out of computer science departments that an overemphasis on Java is making for some poorly-rounded students.” Is it just a matter of teaching Java to the exclusion of everything else, or is Java missing a certain something that makes it unsuitable for teaching? And what’s the difference between a good teaching language and a good working language? Software Development