I had a horrible time with Java when I took CS142 and CS143 at the University of Washington. It was a complex language even back then. As someone who had only p

I had a horrible time with Java when I took CS142 and CS143 at the University of Washington. It was a complex language even back then. As someone who had only played with HTML and a tiny bit of JavaScript back in the late 90s, I found the amount of boilerplate overwhelming and the language confusing. It didn't help that we didn't have the massive amount of online resources that we do today, so figuring anything out required digging through thick textbooks and obscure documentation files... if you could find them. I ended up getting a 2.8 in both of those classes, and it convinced me that I wasn't good enough for Computer Science. I ended up majoring in something related[1], and eventually found my way to a programming career. But I occasionally think back about those days and wonder what course my life would have taken if the classes were taught in a more friendly language like Ruby or Python (which were admittedly quite obscure back then). [1]https://ischool.uw.edu/academics/informatics/what-is-informatics https://ischool.uw.edu/academics/informatics/what-is-informa...