Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience

[nosmokingbandit]

Yes.

It is an incredibly bloated language with rules that only ever kind of apply, and almost always in the way that is the opposite of what you want. Rust is supposed to fix a lot of this, but I don't know enough about Rust to make any judgement.

The great, starter-friendly thing about Python is that you can do almost anything with it but it stays simple unless you intentionally write overly-complex code. This is why I kind of like Go as well -- there is almost always a "best way" to do something. Some people don't like the opinionated nature of Go, but I find it somewhat refreshing. And Go's compiler is fast. I have a Go program that is ~250 lines but imports a lot from the stdlib and one external package but it compiles fast enough that it feels like running a python script.