I think the fact that it took 30 minutes to get through a Hello World program is pretty telling. Here's how I would teach 8th graders using Ruby: puts "Hello

I think the fact that it took 30 minutes to get through a Hello World program is pretty telling. Here's how I would teach 8th graders using Ruby: puts "Hello World" Ok cool, 5 minutes. Now let's learn about loops and conditional statements! Edit: I absolutely do not think there's anything inherently wrong with Java, or with kids learning Java. I just think it's better to show them why programming is awesome first ("Look, you totally just made the computer do your algebra homework for you!") and THEN get into more complex (i.e. harder to debug) languages once they have a firm grasp of the basics like conditional logic, loops, objects, etc.