IMO the problem is not so much transitioning away from C++, but to Java. Java is great, and the JVM is especially cool, but I think it's a bad place to start CS

IMO the problem is not so much transitioning away from C++, but to Java. Java is great, and the JVM is especially cool, but I think it's a bad place to start CS education. I saw this C++ to Java transition happen firsthand at a university and compared to before, students developed handicaps on the IDE and had a much harder time grasping concepts like memory management. (Saying you will never write a memory manager in the workplace is irrelevant; it's a learning exercise just like writing quicksort). Also, Java doesn't cover lambas or recursion any better than C++. Part of the fallout that I witnessed was due to bad planning, since later courses expected students to have knowledge that they never picked up in the new intro course. I guess ultimately it just comes down to the student and the professor, not the language, but my view is tainted from that experience.