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Originally Posted by Mjordan2nd
But what I believe to be an unfortunate side-effect of this method is that 90% of our Computer Science IV guys are going to go to college without knowing how to write a bubble sort.
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Forgive any intrusion, but I have to agree with quite a few of your points, though I'm not sure a specific language is to blame. From my experience, it seems like computer courses focus on teaching a language, rather than teaching programming. In the same way that learning how to speak french is of limited help if you want to learn how to write a novel, learning a programming language is only the first step on a discipline that is sadly lacking from the majority of Computer Science courses.
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Originally Posted by Mjordan2nd
Furthermore, I think it will be easier to learn procedural programming as a first language than it will be to learn OO. I have seen many instances where people portray C as a cryptic language which is arduous to learn.
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I agree with you that pure procedual programming is easier to learn than OO programming, as procedual programming is a subset of OO. I'd also agree that learning C is vital for anyone who wants to program for a living; C gives you a very good idea of the mechanics of your computer, without letting these mechanics totally obscure your view of the big picture. I also agree that plain C is easier to pick up than Java. And Java itself is not without its quirks.
This said, I also believe it's important to learn a higher level language with a high degree of abstraction, such as Ruby, PHP or, indeed, Python. Too much low-level programming can be a bad thing.