E-ink screens aren’t backlit. It’s one of the reasons they are so easy on the eyes. They are front-lit. There are LED’s at the edge of the screen and a light guide on top of the screen that diffuses it onto the e-ink screen. Instead of staring directly into a lightbulb like with LCD the light you see is reflected off the page.
I can imagine wanting to learn a newer, more modern language than python.