I think it's a lot easier to understand OO, for instance, when you know what structs and functions are ("oh, a class is basically a struct with functions [metho

I think it's a lot easier to understand OO, for instance, when you know what structs and functions are ("oh, a class is basically a struct with functions [methods] in it with an implicit argument pointing to itself, and some sugar on top? Cool, that was easy.") versus trying to jump straight in, which is what makes Java so painful to n00bs. I don't see moving to JS helping with that problem much, though. If anything prototypal OO is more confusing without that foundation, and loosey-goosey nothing's-really-defined-for-real-until-runtime languages might be fast to get started in but will quickly lead students into a big ol' swamp of WTF. I'd think a semester of C as an intro, despite its warts, would make everything that followed much clearer. But maybe it'd turn off too many students because everything they'd do in that semester'd be kinda boring.