I know my college's insistance on java as the first language that people learned (at first course 1 was psudocode, course 2 was java) put tons of people off. (This was a decade ago).

When they switched to scheme and python, people took it much better (especially media centric python).

http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/cs1315

If you wish to follow along in their intro course.