HyperCard was formative in my youth as well, and I definitely think JS is a fine introductory language for the self-taught, bootcamps, or even lightweight tech

HyperCard was formative in my youth as well, and I definitely think JS is a fine introductory language for the self-taught, bootcamps, or even lightweight tech school courses. But when we're talking about top-flight CS programs like Stanford I think we should be teaching students something that generalizes better. Java is crufty, but adequate for general algorithms. Personally I did the traditional Scheme in my MIT-based curriculum and so I have a bias for the syntax-less approach with a lisp, but if I'm being honest with myself I have to say that Python really is the best general purpose language for people to cut their teeth on. It's not that I think JS is a bad language, but it is pathological in its TIMTOWTDI-ness, and that is going to confuse the hell out of beginners. To have a fighting chance you're going to have to lock down the curriculum to a sane subset of JS, Crockford-style, but even then you will run into nasty cognitive dissonance when exposed to real-world JS.