Of all these Python sounds the most attractive to me. I think starting off with a scripting language simplifies things and it's enforced structure is a good habit to get into. The fact that it is open-source is a big plus for educational institutions. Someone who picks things up quickly can shift over to Jython and start playing with QUI programming.

I know that I'd hate to start a beginning class trying to explain to people the point behind public static void main(String[] args). I'm tempted to throw out Ruby, but it's something that I've only casually glanced at.

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