> Python is well-integrated in Ubuntu and Debian I've heard this before, but I almost wonder if it's the exception that proves the rule. That is, the rule is:

> Python is well-integrated in Ubuntu and Debian I've heard this before, but I almost wonder if it's the exception that proves the rule. That is, the rule is: your OS is not likely to provide up-to-date development library packages (or interpreters for that matter) for your scripting language of choice. As a developer, you will need to get and build stuff by hand, you will need to manage a complex set of changing load paths, you will need lots of coffee and help. You will come to rely on and love tools outside of the normal distribution tool-chain. I don't do Python, but this rule has proven to be true for me for Perl and Ruby, on systems including OSX, OpenBSD and Debian. I always end up having to get cpanm to install Perl modules, Perlbrew to install newer (or variant) Perl interpreters and ditto for Ruby, rvm and company. (I dabble in Haskell and Lua, and it's true there too so far as I can tell. But my experiences with those languages are too limited to really say.) I think that Python is a special case, and I honestly don't know why. Maybe they've figured out something that Perl and Ruby haven't. Maybe it's because Gnome is built using Python very heavily, and Debian ships with a default Gnome desktop and so they care more about Python. Maybe the Python team at Debian is just better staffed. I don't know, but Python is the exception here.