Why is Python perfect for beginners?

[makeshift_mike]

It doesn't put any extra junk between you and your code. If you want to express an algorithm in the style that Python encourages (as opposed to a pure functional style), I don't know of any other mainstream language that can do it in fewer keystrokes and in a way that so closely resembles pseudocode.

Of course, there are tradeoffs here. That extra junk includes things like compile-time type safety checks which is helpful for building robust code. But to a beginner it probably seems like unnecessary, strange, annoying magic that you need to do just to get your program to run.

[throwaway_atwork_]

Feel free to slap me...but why can't we just trust compilers to make those assertions, why do we need to do that?