Maybe he wanted to find common ground as an introduction to something that is quite intimidating to a lot of people? I see the whole point of 'introductions to'

Maybe he wanted to find common ground as an introduction to something that is quite intimidating to a lot of people? I see the whole point of 'introductions to' like this is to let people decide whether they are interested or not and then it's up to them to take it further, whether that be matlab or C or whatever.