[jventura]

I have to agree with you, Python does really have lots of magic things, such the for loop, list comprehensions and generators, to name a few.

I also teach programming for a living, and, for instance, I usually have a hard time explaining to students what a for loop over a range() means for having a index. The problem is that there are a lot of things going on behind a for-each (which is what the for loop on Python does) and it is hard to explain that to newcomers. On the other hand, for loops in languages like C are simpler to explain to newcomers, as there isn't much hidden from you, and you don't have many alternatives for iterating on an array.

I would say that the higher-level benefits of Python are best understood when you have some experience with lower-level languages such as C/C++ or Java. For students, if they have time, I would say that they would benefit pedagogically by learning a simpler language with less functionalities. If not, I would say learn Python, but expect to not understand everything at first.