Python is stupidly simple and that's the reason I use it for 99% of my work (netsec/forensics).

I introduced my ex to it for her dissertation in astro-physics. It took her under a week to mainly self-learn and start writing scripts with numpy and matplotlib, and it was her first language. The code wasn't good by professional standards, but it did the job. I cannot think of any programming/scripting language which can be learned by someone with no previous programming experience in under a week at a level where it can be used in a masters dissertation.