[quote name='jonbonazza' timestamp='1323902375' post='4894015']
The dominate idea behind starting with C++ in my university is that, in order to write good code, it forces you to understand exactly what you are doing, sometimes down to a low level

This has the logical consistency of telling an artist he should cut one of his testicles off to truely understand emotion. The Van Goghs of the world may agree, but most others would not.
[/quote]

Hah...well some programmers are very Van Gogh.

Another spin of what jon said: It forces you to think about memory. At my university, they started us with Java but at least you got some exposure to how things are really laid out (and why) in our OS (which had all assignments in C/C++ even) and computer organization classes. In my opinion, if you at least get that sort of exposure, what you start out isn't all that critical, at least in the first year.

Also to the OP:

A programming language is nothing but a tool. It's how you use it that's important, and most of the more mainstream/popular languages all have their benefits and disadvantages, so often their usage can depend on the requirements of the type of software you want to put together. No one language will teach you how to be a good programmer, as there's a lot to software development than just the programming language - algorithms, data structures, understanding time/space complexities (how long does it run, how much memory it takes), etc. To understand those topics takes a lot longer than learning any one programming language, and are crucial in any software endeavor, including programming a game.