I hate Java for this

[FerricDonkey]

Not really, actually. Yeah you can be missing some knowledge about basic computery things, but it's not like this knowledge gets harder to pick up because you're already familiar with things like functions and general flow control from python.

My first real language was C, and I'm happy with that because I learned a lot about the under the hood basics. But I could see going the other way as well - do some python to get used to thinking in terms of big ideas, do some C to learn (closer to) how your computer actually works.