The typical follow up question is 'well, what do you want to see?'
The typical response for someone starting out will often be 'I want to see everything', which is fair enough. Why should a newbie be looking at specialised telescopes for certain types of objects when they're only just getting their feet wet?
And so the typical answer tends to be 'get a 6 to 8" Dob' (like
this).
The reason being that it is a good all-rounder. The wider the lens or mirror of a telescope, the the fainter the objects you will be able to see, AND, the finer the details that you will be able to resolve.
In a scope like the one above, it has the advantage that you are spending most of the money on the optics. The mount is very simple and there are no electronics - you're mostly paying for the mirrors and focuser.
On the other hand, you do need to know where the object you want to look at is, then push the telescope to the object you want to look at using the finderscope and star-hopping until it is in the main eyepiece. There are lots of free software that can help you with this and as you become more familiar with the night sky, it gets easier. Once found, the object will slowly drift out of view as the earth moves.
There are other telescopes others have mentioned that can go and find stuff for you, with the considerable caveat that a computer controlled mount is more expensive, which takes a bite out of the total budget leaving less money for the actual telescope than you would otherwise be able to get. So, the advantage of finding things in the night sky more easily is negated somewhat by the fact that you won't be able to *see as much through a smaller telescope once the computer finds it for you. In any case I find computers add a level of complication that don't actually make anything much easier in the end. There can be a lot of fiddling about if the computer isn't working the way they should (all my scopes are computerised because, evidently, I'm an idiot who likes fiddling about and swearing in the dark a lot!).
For a beginner I think the physical simplicity of being able to simply push the telescope to look at something is invaluable and less likely to kill the interest of a young enthusiast than something that can have wifi issues, or have a motor die, or get confused and think it's in the wrong hemisphere, or what have you.
My first real telescope was an 8" Dob and I had it for many years and I loved it to bits. The one I had before that was a 60mm refractor which I found quite frustrating because it didn't give a particularly good view of anything - it was too small for anything other than terrestrial use or perhaps for the Moon.
I hope that helps.
Markus