> an associative array is sometimes called a 'hash' (Perl), but Python calls it a 'dictionary'. Python seems to go out of it's way to not use the common terms found throughout the computer and information science field.

The author isn’t well-informed. “Dictionary” is the original and traditional name for associative arrays. Smalltalk uses it as well, as do many CS books on algorithms and data structures. See for example: https://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/dictionary.html