I'm a heavy Python user, and have worked with a number of colleagues who have learned it as their first language in my group. And BASIC was my first language.

I think Python is easy to use as a scripting language thanks to the proliferation of libraries, meaning that you can get things done without touching the obscure stuff. Many users can be quite productive with precisely the subset of Python that's not too different from BASIC. Python adds features faster than I can learn them, and though I'm a productive user, I scored "average" on a skills test.