[samatman]

I would say of your four contenders, you eliminated Julia too quickly, it's perfect.

For one reason: it's a dynamic language with types. It's good to have types in a first language, they're too important to neglect. But with Julia, you just introduce them later.

Also, 1 based indexing is easier on anyone who hasn't already gotten used to 0 based indexing, and it's the only language in your last paragraph where zero isn't false.

But it depends more on why they want to learn than anything else. If they want to make web apps, for some reason, obviously JavaScript, and if they like games, it should be Lua. Data and numerics stuff, AI? Julia obviously ;)