I think Python is perceived as easy to pick up because it's a scripting language, not because it's dynamically typed. I wish I could recommend a statically-type

I think Python is perceived as easy to pick up because it's a scripting language, not because it's dynamically typed. I wish I could recommend a statically-typed scripting language that's easy to pick up, but I'm not familiar with any mainstream ones (and I'm probably too far from the newbie stage myself to be a good judge).