Agreed. When asked, I keep saying that Java is not the best "first language" to teach to a person, because it overwhelms people with concepts from the get-go.
A normal person who's sincerely trying to learn, when shown the Hello World will ask about everything - what is this "class" and why it's needed? What does "public", "static" and "void" mean, and why they're written. What "System.out" is? Not to mention, the package declaration at the top of the file.
All of those things have reasons for them, but when explaining this to a novice, you'll have to initially handwave most of those reasons away. That seems very uncalled for, especially when the basic abstraction you're trying to teach is that "computer executes simple instructions top to bottom, one at a time, and everything is built out of those simple instructions".
A normal person who's sincerely trying to learn, when shown the Hello World will ask about everything - what is this "class" and why it's needed? What does "public", "static" and "void" mean, and why they're written. What "System.out" is? Not to mention, the package declaration at the top of the file.
All of those things have reasons for them, but when explaining this to a novice, you'll have to initially handwave most of those reasons away. That seems very uncalled for, especially when the basic abstraction you're trying to teach is that "computer executes simple instructions top to bottom, one at a time, and everything is built out of those simple instructions".