The university I went to have now switched from Java to Python for introductory computer science. So this type of change may influence this increase in popularity as well.

I remember being a bit baffled that they used Java and not Python as an introductory language. It's a very obvious choice for beginners.

Lol, I remember the first lesson.

    class HelloWorld {
      public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello, world");
      }
    }