Yeah, I don’t think it assumes zero knowledge, which is what I’d expect from a “first programming language” book.

But it does say it’s targeted more for an “algorithms” course in the introduction.

As a side note, I think a REPL is the best environment for learning to program for absolute beginners. You get instant feedback and can focus entirely on just short snippets of real code, without having to worry about compilers, build systems, and “the OS” as a whole. Especially if it comes with a GUI wrapper, you can skip the terminal entirely.