What is the best programming language to start with?

Around 2003, I have a friend who would like to learn basic programming and asked me if I could teach him some basic stuffs for novice. I tried to teach C, but it took me time to explain the code line by line from the start up to the end of the source code (like Hello World with some computation):

#include < stdio.h >

int main(void)
{
int a,b,sum;
printf("Hello World!\n");

a=2;
b=5;
sum=a+b;

printf ("2 + 5 = %d\n",sum);

return 0;
}

Around 2008, I have a friend who wants to learn programming and I started to teach Python. Using the same goal above:

print "Hello World"
a=2
b=5
sum=a+b

print "2 + 5 = ",sum

I took less time explaining this Python code than with the previous C code.

Personally, I am in favor of using Python instead of C to those who wants to learn basic programming even at schools or universities. Python is a very good starting language and I am using this language since 2007.