[cookiecaper]

Python is actually much better than almost all equivalent languages in this. Consider that custom package managers like rvm/bundler, nvm/npm, etc., are considered must-haves for any kind of serious development on Ruby or Node, whereas use of virtualenv is still kind of seen as a "bonus" feature. The fact that Python is good enough to allow that demonstrates its robustness.

Stop using Python 2. All of the justifications I'm seeing in this thread are complete non-starters. If you want to use a 3.3 feature, install Python 3.3. Are you seriously suggesting that we revert to the problems of 2.x, discarding all the effort that's been dumped into Py3 compat over the last 7 years, because you don't want to install a software package? It's really common to need to add extra sources to a package manager for new versions of things, and it's also common to need to build your own packages. It shouldn't be that hard. Be grateful that at least there's a possibility you can use the system Python, since Ruby communities don't really have that luxury.

[palmstroem]

After we migrated to Python 3, we came to regret the decision with considerable regularity. We mostly use MacOS, and working with OpenGL and scientific libraries has been painful. We never found that a library we needed was not available for 2.7, but lots of stuff has not been ported to 3.3. The syntactic advantages of 3 have been too minor to warrant the troubles we earned. Your mileage may vary, if you have different applications, of course.