Python for Humans · Draft v0.1 · Oct 23, 2026 · Introduction · First draft.

Introduction

Hi! I'm happy you're here.

I don't need to convince you that learning how to program is worthwhile: you're already on this website! But as you proceed down this learning journey, you might need to remind yourself from time to time why persevering is worth it.

After all, in late 2026, everything "out there" suggests coding is a solved problem done by AI. Why learn how to code—or do maths or any other subject--when AI can do it for you, better and faster? The thing to note is that even AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are still hiring many, many humans. Even though AGI is just around the corner. Make of that what you will.

The key point is that learning how to code, just like learning any new skill, benefits you in multiple ways. Off the top of my head, completing the content on this website will:

• Teach you how to think like a programmer
• Teach you to read and write actual code
• Make you better at using AI for tasks
• Show you how to build almost anything you want with code and AI

I certainly won't tell you not to use AI. But I would tell you to treat it like a tool, a very powerful one, but not a full replacement for your understanding or your own work, whatever that may be.

Why Python

One quick section before we dive into coding. You may be wondering why choose Python when there are so many programming languages available? When I first learned how to program many years ago, Python was a less obvious choice than it is today. But right now it's hard to argue against Python if you're getting started. Python was designed to read like English in its syntax, that is, how the language is written.

Consider the code required to print out "Hello, World!" Here it is in Python:

print("Hello, World!")

And here it is in Java, a very popular programming language:

public class HelloWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello, World!");
    }
}

And in C++, another programming language, it looks like this:

#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::cout << "Hello, World!" << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

What do you notice? Python is more concise. It doesn't have curly {} or angle brackets << everywhere. It "feels" like English, like if you asked ChatGPT to do something, it would be much more like Python than almost any other programming language available.

Python is also extremely powerful, used in an unusually broad domain of areas from AI to web development to data science, scientific research, exploring the depths of the universe to the smallest cells in biology. Python can do it all, which means you can stick to one language to start and yet explore many different computing concepts and areas.

If you decide to focus on programming more seriously, you will naturally pick up additional languages but this will be so much easier once you've learned how to use one well, as the core computer science topics that you'll discover—variables, strings, functions, etc.—are the same in every language. The main difference is how they are represented, as you can see in the Python vs Java vs C++ example above.