I'd like to share a tool I've been working on to make WPILibJ programming easier. I'm calling it EasyJ. Its a block environment where each block roughly correlates 1 to 1 with a line of code.
Currently it supports Iterative Robot style programming, but we are working on Command Based.
I'm working with a teacher at Old Town High School and after teaching some Java basics her classe used EasyJ to start programming the robot.
http://easyj.team5122.com/
Hope that helps,
Blake