I've had about 6 people in my work area learn Python. We're not employed as programmers, but we're scientists in an R&D team. My colleagues varied in experience, some had used Matlab in college, but none had programmed extensively.

The scripting aspect is great because you can get useful things done with a few lines and minimal constructs. There's a pile of solved problems on Stackoverflow. Folks can approach it at their own pace and on their own terms, at work or at home. I promise them that if they hate it, I'll refund the price. ;-)

Now, germane to the discussion in this thread about installing the packages and so forth. That's a drawback to Python that I tell people about, but my approach is to provide complete hand holding on installation until they've come up to speed on programming. If they've never programmed, then they've probably never approached a computer from the command line or dug into its file structure. So, learning a bit of programming first is a good way to prepare for doing that other stuff.

I originally learned BASIC without knowing how to install BASIC on the mainframe.

We're a Windows shop, so I help them download and install WinPython. Running into a useful library that WinPython doesn't have is pretty rare, and then a pip install within the WinPython shell usually works.