Yeah, I try to avoid "sudo pip install" for CLI utilities if I can (and discourage its use to others). I put ~/.local/bin on my PATH (nonstandard XDG -like convention) and use "pip install --user" instead.
I've seen too many Python environments hosed by folks who aren't Python experts to keep suggesting that "sudo pip install <CLI tool>" is a thing most users should be doing.
I use ~/.bin/ for what sounds like the same purpose. I'm not sure I'd call that a convention - it's just what made sense to me - but it does ease issues requiring that userspace executables be on my $PATH.
So you need to be root to write to /usr/local/bin/. How does NPM magically solve this? (pip has the `--user` flag to install for just the current user, as tom points out.)
It doesn't solve it, and I don't think I claimed it did - I simply inferred that I don't think installing it into the system (or user) Python is a good idea either.
Ah, I see, I misunderstood your comment. But I think pip gives you better options than NPM, which installs into either /usr/local/(...) or the current directory. The latter sounds like a mess waiting to happen.
I've seen too many Python environments hosed by folks who aren't Python experts to keep suggesting that "sudo pip install <CLI tool>" is a thing most users should be doing.