Yep, precisely right about irritation or desire being the spur to learning! Python is indeed an amazing onramp … the easiest-on-the-eyes, certainly. When I started re-teaching myself programming seven years ago I started with Javascript because I wanted to build some web tools for myself, and I didn’t get around to looking at Python for a year or so, at which point I was like “whoa, this is one is sleek”, lol.

Excel turns out to be another interesting on-ramp for people learning to automate things and/or dip a toe into algorthmic thinking; the amount of automation possible with Excel formulas is quite remarkable …