If I was teaching a programming class, I'd probably pick Coffeescript or Python as the implementation language (Nothing against Ruby ... I'm just not expert enough to be teaching it).

My rationale is that I can easily start just by letting the students type into REPL while they're learning basic concepts like assignment and operators. Classes are there when you need them but can be ignored until the students are comfortable with both the language syntax and the basic concepts behind programming.

I hate classes where the instructor says "just do this without asking why for now" ... and I learn best when I can experiment freely and iterate quickly.

I think another problem with teaching java in university is that pretty much everything is defined in detail. I have seen students that were taught java write ocaml code that expected a particular order of evaluation of expressions (which is undefined (implementation defined) btw).