Short answer: No and I don't think so, respecitevely. (though there are lots of C#-based boards running the .NET Micro Framework if you bend that way.) EDIT: O

Short answer: No and I don't think so, respecitevely. (though there are lots of C#-based boards running the .NET Micro Framework if you bend that way.) EDIT: Oh, just remembered you can program Lego Mindstorm in Java. Although I don't know how user-friendly that environment actually is, it's not the one Mindstorm comes with. Long answer: The C++ dialect you use when getting started on Arduino is fairly short on C++-isms and is designed to be simple, straightforward and familiar for people who used the Java-based Processing framework. So it wouldn't be a big stretch. At a guess I would even say Arduino is very much simpler than Java for a total beginner, talking in terms of number of concepts required to build something simple but useful.