Which language to use for Introduction to Computer Science shouldn't be a big issue--Computer Science should be programming language independent. The syllabus I envision would teach concepts independent of programming languages (but use multiple programming languages as examples) and would begin with a discussion of computer architectures, computer instructions sets, and assembly language.

I learned Intro to CS in Ada back in 2009 or something. Loved it.

I don't think it matters what language and making the language a big deal is like making the OS choice a big deal. It never mattered and it shouldn't matter.

MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, and Cornell use Python; Harvard and Princeton use C; Berkeley uses Lisp :); Illinois and UWash use Java

It's interesting how diverse the language choices of CS101 courses are at different universities.

I'm waiting for a CS101 taught in PHP.

JS no. Swift or Go - yes please.

Or Rust, or maybe F#. All interesting choices, but wouldn't it be like choosing a company for their students?