Teaching programming to beginners - choosing the language is just the first step

Over the years there has been an ongoing debate about which computer language to adopt for a first programming subject. Although some may not agree, the current consensus is that the object-oriented languages are winning the argument, and Java has increasingly become the language of choice for teaching beginners. But choosing the language is only the first step in designing a first programming subject. The adoption of an object-oriented language such as Java offers an opportunity to completely rethink our approach to teaching first-year programming, an opportunity that should not be missed. In this paper we identify what we see as the non language-specific core issues, and discuss how we approached these issues when designing and teaching a programming subject for beginners.