[Locke1689]

I think you're confused to what "systems" programming entails. User-space packaging with a bunch of scripts is not systems programming. OS installers is not systems programming.

To give you an example of what is systems programming, I have helped developed operating systems kernels, virtual machine monitors, and distributed networked systems. All of these things would be considered systems programming.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_programming for more information.

[microtonal]

That's just one definition. Read up on Ousterhout's dichotomy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhouts_dichotomy

[Locke1689]

You should just read http://home.pacbell.net/ouster/scripting.html (his original paper) because all his statements about systems programming languages reinforces my claim that Python is not a systems programming language.