Use of Mathematica for Machine Learning Course

I am interested in others' experience using Mathematica for machine learning online course curricula. Let me first say that I have been programming with MMA for almost 10 years now (out of the 40 I have been programming total!). I love the aesthetics and language structure.

I am putting together a bioinformatics course for graduate students in biological sciences, with an emphasis on rigor and reproducibility, but also with sections on high dimensional data analysis, network science, and an introduction to machine learning concepts. I would love to do this with MMA notebooks for course notes, etc.

I would be interested in other's experience putting together course materials in bioinformatics and machine learning with MMA, and their reception among colleagues and students.

My questions are:

1) Have others done this, and would they be willing to share examples of their syllabi?

2) Seems like the future of ML (at least for now) is heavily Python weighted; is there any role for MMA here? I hope so, but am concerned.

If this is not the appropriate forum for this, please suggest where I should post.

Thanks!