It was the first language taught at my university and I wholeheartedly agree. Java was actually more confusing because I couldn't comprehend what the classes/objects things were at first. I just knew functions.
OO concepts were introduced after that, and the boilerplate code was explained. I'd done Basic, VB5, and what I'd call "C with iostreams" before college, and it felt like a fairly gentle exposure to classes and objects. Recursion took me longer to get a handle on, actually.