Thanks for your comments and recommendation. Your points (and my own failings here) illustrate why libraries like Sodium (which was not on my radar a few weeks ago) are a good thing.

As an ordinary developer, I just want to use a library like PyCrypto in a safe manner. When I described the language as "jargon" I did not mean to be dismissive of it, but rather to say that libraries like PyCrypto force you to make decisions about terms that are nothing more than jargon to a non-expert -- when really what a non-expert needs is an extremely simple API which makes those decisions on your behalf in a safe manner.

Thanks again and these are humbling lessons to learn.