I took Fundies 1 at NEU last year, but I came in with a good amount of programming experience. I appreciated it because it forced me to think in a new programming paradigm (functional) but for a lot of my classmates who were beginners it was tough because of the much more puzzle-like nature of the problems. I also didn't think it was very fair to these students for the curriculum to immediately abandon Racket after the first semester and go right into Java for the second. The Fundies classes can at times be very discouraging because of the intensity.