Whilst Java has a great object-system, we must remember that OO is not the be all and end all of a language – we managed perfectly well in C before Java came along and whilst GUI’s were a bit messy without OO, not all problems are best tackled with an OO approach.

A rather simplistic example, the old Hello World application – in Java, you have to create a class and then a static main method with arguments that you are never going to use etc. In Lisp, the program would just be :-

“Hello World”

OK it’s not a realistic example but it illustrates how objects can get in the way when they are not necessary.

As for a teaching language, Java is a poor choice because it doesn’t even support some of the things that you would want to teach e.g. macros, closures and continuations. A functional language like Lisp or better still Scheme would be a far better choice. The power of these languages is that they are extensible through macros and closures in a way that Java isn’t – hence all the dirty XML frameworks that litter our daily lives.

Glad I discovered your blog – I’ll read the other articles.

Geoff.