I am so old that I have always liked the parsimony of good old fashioned C. My K&R still sits up there on my office book shelves and even though I never use it anymore I am loath the throw it out. I think that C allows learning of the fundamentals very well without a whole lot of syntax to worry about. I have worked with far too many 'expert coders' from the wizards and other gadgetry generation that hardly know what bits and bytes are let alone basic error checking not to insist on giving someone a solid grasp of the fundamentals first. From there if there appears to be a sustainable level of interest then move to OO with Java. If you want to try Java on steroids then try Grails.
Incidentally Fortran is still very much alive and kicking over at Bloomberg...
