IMO it mostly boils down to good practices in symbology, projection, legend, scaling, etc. being better implemented and easy-to-use for the map maker. ggplot2

IMO it mostly boils down to good practices in symbology, projection, legend, scaling, etc. being better implemented and easy-to-use for the map maker. ggplot2 is an obvious heavy-weight, but other packages such as mapsf and tmap also are top notch in this regard. on the other hand, my general map making experience in Python has not been very pleasant when I had to work towards creating a map following acceptable cartographic practices, ie. anything beyond throwing data on a webmap layer with subpar legend and symbology.