&gt; I really dislike the idea that programming languages have &quot;commands&quot;<p>I can see a perspective in which it makes sense to call imperative subroutines (in Python terms, functions that have side effects and follow the Python idiom for principally-effectful functions of returning None regardless of their inputs) &quot;commands&quot;. But I probably wouldn&#x27;t do it in a Python-focussed tutorial intended for new programmers, because it conflicts with what the language itself calls them and creates unnecessary friction.