I think that a programming language that is easy for non-programmers to read might be easier to learn. When I learned Python, it took me significantly less time to internalize its syntax than with C.
In the case of your example, not just easier to learn, but far easier to use on a daily basis to get things done (unless the things you need to do are mostly things that need to run faster than Python can go without lots of tweaking).
Which suggests a correlation between a language being easy for beginners to learn and being productive for advanced coders.
