> If so maybe the difference is that the posix/linux crowd is more likely to have installed a compiler at this point. The long running issue with Windows was t

> If so maybe the difference is that the posix/linux crowd is more likely to have installed a compiler at this point. The long running issue with Windows was that there weren't any compilers available (AFAIK) outside of installing Visual Studio first. When Visual Studio started offering free versions, the problem persisted: it's rather hard to justify downloading and installing a +4gb program just to make an dependency or extension to work (even if it wasn't directly required for the said dep). For example, this was a huge issue with node-gyp[1], which prompted Microsoft to release standalone Build Tools[2] to alleviate the problem. I think it's the same kind of issue with Python here, right? [1] https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/629 https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/629 [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49983 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=499...