Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like you're not alone in your thoughts on numpy. I'll brainstorm better solutions--maybe explaining each numpy function in a side note or adding a numpy overview to the appendix. It just makes things so much easier so I am hesitant to go numpy-less.

Getting started was definitely the hardest part. I put the book together with JupyterBook (https://jupyterbook.org/intro.html), which I would highly recommend! Really neat tool and a helpful community.