Comment by semi-extrinsic

Controversial opinion: the insistence on the venv bullshit is the stupidest decision made in programming languages in the past twenty years, and it is entirely unnecessary.

I've used Python for more than a decade on Arch Linux, across many machines at home and work. For essentially all of that time, I've been "sudo pip install"-ing to my heart's content. The number of times this has actually caused problems with my own Python scripts is less than the number of times I've had to help colleagues figure out venv bullshit in the past six months alone. The number of times that "sudo pip install" has caused breakage of anything except my own scripts is zero in ten years.

AFAICT the Python core team has essentially no understanding of the level of sophistication and the actual pain points experienced by 95% of Python users. Python is the software equivalent of duct tape, and it is used accordingly. Putting the duct tape in a box that is hard to open and covered with warning labels is not a meaningful improvement.