During my 3 years at University we covered this language for 2 semesters and seemed to provide a foundation to later teach C++. At the time I really didn't like the language much though I have a feeling it was partly down to the way it was taught. These days it doesn't bother me a great deal and it's an OK language if you've got a good reason to use it (since it is cross platform and can be used to create Applets after all). Most of what Java was once used for on the web is now done using Flash, Silverlight, or AIR - this is now primarily for creating cross-platform desktop apps it seems.

Excellent

A good language if you need your applications to go to muliple OSes with little code change, but extremely SLOW compared to it's alternative C++ which can also be easily recompiled on many differant OSes (using GUI's such as qt3 and the such).