D vs Java as a first programming language

[Walter Bright]

bearophile wrote:
> So beside asking the age of your students, a second important
> question to ask you is the kind of things you want to teach, and the
> kind of students you have. If your purpose is to teach just
> programming, then Java may be better. If your purpose is to teach
> some math too, to think in a flexible way, logical thinking,
> recursivity, functional programming, parallel thinking, and so on,
> then maybe Scheme is a better choice, despite it's almost useless
> compared to Java.

That's a very good point. If my students intended to become top 
professionals and had a keen interest, I'd start them with assembler, 
and follow up with D. If they were 9 year old kids wanting to toy 
around, I'd probably start with a language with instant gratification, 
like javascript.