It's also nicely self-contained, especially if you use a distribution like Anaconda. You don't have to spend hours fighting with the configuration and tooling. It's also very easy to debug and step through code using Spyder, which is similar to MATLAB. It makes it easy for someone who is smart and generally competent with computers to be productive in a short amount of time without first amassing huge amounts of arcane knowledge-- knowledge that isn't actually helpful to making working code!