My spouse expressed interest in learning to program and I thought the best way to start would be with Python as it would be the code structure without all that

My spouse expressed interest in learning to program and I thought the best way to start would be with Python as it would be the code structure without all that extra boilerplate, and doing simply things in Python is easy. I'm coming to realize that the boilerplate is important. She's struggled a bit with a lot of the things that are explicit in other languages. Variables are just magic in Python - in other languages there's a structure for their creation. I think that structure is important to understand and helps to formalize how things work - it helps build up mental models that just doesn't exist in Python. I don't agree with the article on a lot of thing - I think the string criticisms are splitting hairs (and aren't all string in 3+ unicode by default?), naming quirks are in every language, and the version split can be treated as a non-issue (just learn 3.8 and if you have to learn the quirks for 2.x to support that version). I do agree with the scope - I think curly braces are easier to visualize and less magic. It's the magic that's kills the beginner experience.