> Which is a reasonable assumption to make, for example, if the language in question is also used by system utilities in a traditional Linux distribution. You r

> Which is a reasonable assumption to make, for example, if the language in question is also used by system utilities in a traditional Linux distribution. You really don't want yum invoking the wrong version of python. Yep, this is the core reason: there needs to be a "system" distribution of Python, Ruby, etc. for packages written in those languages, and that distribution fundamentally needs to prioritize the interests of the package manager over "external" uses. This is particularly painful in the Python world, since using a "system" Python distribution for local development can break the system itself in all kinds of fun and exciting ways (usually beginning with a well-intentioned `sudo pip install ...`). Homebrew suffers from this like other system package managers do, with the added pain that many macOS users expect Homebrew to do everything (whereas Linux users typically understand that they need `pyenv` or similar). PEP 668[1] helps a bit here by clarifying the responsibilities/expected behavior of system Python distributions, but at the cost of heartburn for some user scenarios (i.e. ones that depend on `pip install -U` and similar). [1]: https://peps.python.org/pep-0668/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0668/