Great tutorial and walk through. I've been using python for many years, now, and it's versatility never ceases to amaze me.
I really like how you've devoted a paragraph to remind users to be careful of their keys. The importance of keys and password management cannot be stressed enough. When I was new to coding I would put passwords right into the script because it was easy, and that's just The Wrong Thing To Do.
Very nice post.
RE: Part 3: Coding on Hive With Python - Writing Data to Hive