I'd bet $100 that the AP exam will switch to Python within ten years. And probably not much more than 5. (No sooner than that though, or they'd have to have an

I'd bet $100 that the AP exam will switch to Python within ten years. And probably not much more than 5. (No sooner than that though, or they'd have to have announced it already; major changes in public education need a LOT of lead time.) However, I'll disagree that Python would be that much easier than Java for a beginner's course. It's lower-friction, to be sure, but the VAST majority of student difficulties are with precise logical thinking, not with the syntax. Decomposing a problem into discrete, correctly-ordered steps is the core difficulty. This is unrelated to syntax.