I've always felt that it's weird that Python is considered a "beginner" language. Yeah, it uses "and" instead of "&&", but it took me a loooonnng time to figure out how to manage dependencies when I was starting out (and then figuring out how to deploy to targets, how to do reproducible builds, etc). Compared with Rust or Go which just do the right thing by default (personally I've always felt that the tooling is the way more important problem than language concepts which often feel like bike shedding to me).

I also despair that it's used as a beginner language. There are so many better options. I even include Java in that list.

So why is it used? As it has a fantastic eco-system for applied statistics / machine learning / various math things. If you're teaching an introduction to programming then it's a very effective language.

That and once people progress it's decent - much prefer the code written in Python by competent developers to that written in Java or even Go. It also sets people up to use more robust languages such as C# or (for those with a Math background) Haskell.