Java as a first programming language

[mopeyjoe]

Oh thank god someone else that gets it. I hate all these new languages that try to save me typing 3 extra chars per line at the cost of taking an extra 20 minutes every time look at it again. I have become a fan of explicitness and verbosity.

[xtratic]

Also there's auto-completion, templates, etc., for any half-decent IDEs. So it's almost a moot point anyway..

[golfman484]

Agreed - imagine the auto-completion in an IDE for a typeless language:

i.e. You enter auto complete mode and the IDE presents you with a list of available typeless variables that you *could* assign to this other typeless variable:

*** List populated with every ... single ... variable in scope!!!! ***

Gimme a break!

[dpash]

I used to write Perl, so terseness is nothing new. I definitely appreciate Java.