In defense of complicated programming languages

In the winter of 2014/15, I was a university student, who characteristically had too much free time on my hands, and not enough money to keep myself busy in that free time. Bored and broke, programming was a perfect hobby to pick up. It's free if you already own a computer, and the time investment is not a discouragement when you're fighting boredom. I chose to learn Python on a recommendation, and I can heartedly forward that recommendation to a beginner: The learning curve is gentle, and the language is mostly pleasant and without too many distractions when you just need to wrap your head around how a for loop works. I advanced quickly enough.

There was, however, one concept I struggled deeply with understanding: Classes. Not the dark magic in the depths of class implementation grimoire, but simply the concept of classes as it appears on its surface.

Classes allow you to model objects directly in your code. Suppose you write some code that concerns your dog, Rex, who can bark. In that case, you could write:

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