I have to disagree. I wouldn't point anyone who is non technical towards a language that is not memory managed, nor would I point them to a non mainstream language.
Why point them to a language where they have to worry about memory allocation. While it is important to understand eventually, for most beginners it is a needless complication and chance to shoot yourself in the foot.
Why point them to a non mainstream language whe the number of tutorials, forums and ore resources for help are plentiful with a more popular language. There is tremendous value in learning languages that are wildly different, but for starters, one with lots of support is the best option. Here's a nice post about programming language popularity: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/09/12/language-rankings-9-12.... The languages I would recommend would be in the upper right corner of the graph.
Finally, and most important, what did the beginner want to do? If they wanted to write an excel plugin, steering them to objective C would be a disservice, and if they wanted to build a webpage, choosing something like vb would be a bad idea as well.