Why can't we use a real language! This topic has been coming up a lot recently. Now I'm not talking about the Drag and drop vs textual language thing. Let me be clear. To me a Drag and Drop language can certainly be a real language and many are. I also think they're terrific when used correctly. I just think they're frequently misapplied in later grades. No, I'm talking about people asking things like "Why do we have to use Java in our class, why can't we use a real language like __.

This morning, Mark Guzdial wrote about Stanford possibly moving away from Java as their intro language. This comes on the heels of a semi-regular thread on one of the lists I'm on asking about what languages are used at assorted colleges around the country. Invariably the Pascal -> C++ -> Java progression of APCS turns up in these threads. There are plenty of arguments to be made both for and against pretty much any language or platform.