(Course author here) Thanks. We chose Python because it's a little more approachable for many people that Java, and is the language used in Udacity's Comp Sci 1

(Course author here) Thanks. We chose Python because it's a little more approachable for many people that Java, and is the language used in Udacity's Comp Sci 101 course. Also, using Hadoop Streaming saved us from having to explain a bunch of concepts such as WritableComparables, InputFormats etc that would just have got in the way of the basic MapReduce principles.