I don't think that's strictly true. There are books/projects that one can do in other languages to get acquainted with ML -- there's nothing that _strictly_ ti

I don't think that's strictly true. There are books/projects that one can do in other languages to get acquainted with ML -- there's nothing that _strictly_ ties it to python, at all. Would it open doors? sure! -- and it may make more sense to invest in learning python first. But it probably makes sense to do that learning in some domain that you already know, so you can gauge how effective/correct you're being. I'm sure there's some adversarial combination to be found where the mantra doesn't apply, but in practice, it's done me a world of good.