Back in the olden days I learned programming and made games with BlitzBasic and PureBasic. A simple programming language, but with included functions to easily display sprites on a screen or play a sound. Everything else you had to do yourself, so it wasn’t a game engine, but you still could have results quickly without too much boilerplate code. It was great for learning, together with the community around it.

• PyGame seems similar. And you’re learning a useful language to boot.
• PICO-8 is a little virtual console with everything built-in to write tiny pixel games in Lua.
• Plain JavaScript with the Canvas element. You can do everything yourself, only the HTML/CSS stuff around the Canvas makes it a bit more cumbersome. But you can always write your own functions to easily draw a sprite etc.
• JavaScript with PixiJS. Higher level Canvas functions (demo). Looks like fun.

Or you could start with the Godot engine. That way you could eventually make bigger games. But for learning game-making and especially programming from scratch it’s too high level. Better learn the basics first, write a lil’ Tetris, Game of Life, Screensaver etc. before using complicated huge tools.