I believe the College Board's choice stemmed from the fact that most large corporations use Java for their infrastructure. While unfortunate, Java is one of the

I believe the College Board's choice stemmed from the fact that most large corporations use Java for their infrastructure. While unfortunate, Java is one of the most taught languages in colleges. I took AP Comp Sci AB last year, and I found that although the material was somewhat easy, many of the students had difficulty dealing with the syntax. Another major issue i noticed was with the concept of OO programming. IMHO it would be better to start an AP CS course with a semester of Python, so that the students can get an idea of how programming works, without having to deal with Java's verbosity. Then you can spend the second semester exclusively on Java. Because the students will already know the basics of programming at this point, they only really have to deal with the syntax and with generics, instead of having to learn syntax and coding at once. That's just my 2 cents...