> - no standard way of setting up an environment for MANY years hurt

I will say coming from years of perl that python had a refreshing amount of "batteries included" via the standard library.

It was only rarely that my code needed "outside help", usually something like requests or numpy.

I suspect this is because I used python in the same environment as perl, automating unixy kinds of things.

I suspect "setting up an environment" is because python has been so successful, becoming an enormously broad general language.