[erikb]

If you only think in Python then packaging really might be a painpoint. But honestly if we look at other languages it's not so bad actually, very specifically calling out Golang here because it claimed exactly this topic as an initial design goal and to this day has basically failed at delivering it.

There are even languages like C++ where the community as a (w)hole has given up on that topic and instead opts for completely building every tool by building the underlying libraries up first manually.

Considering all this, who can actually beat Python at this point? Java maybe? Is Ruby still competing? How is NodeJS doing?

Currently with what I see around me (mostly Go and C++) I don't feel too bad about setuptools+pip+virtualenv anymore.

[johnlinvc]

Ruby's bundler is pretty neat. It's one of the first systems that introduced lock files.