All true. It still doesn’t make it any less infuriating with someone marginally familiar with Python on MacOS being utterly flummoxed when they just type python myscript.py and expect it to either work or give them a comprehensible error message to install the right version. Sure, virtual environments, you say, but I guarantee you that people who aren’t using python as their daily professional driver probably aren’t using venv. So for these users getting rid of the system default old version is a good thing. Personally I wouldn’t remind relying on system installed python in MacOS if it was 3+ for many cases. I’m not using bleeding edge features in 90% of use cases so if I’m just trying to dash off a quick script that I expect to just work outside of a container (lots of personal automation ends up feeling like using containers is total overkill) I’ll use the system interpreter. If I’m doing a big boy work project I’ll use venv.

This absolutely.

Trying to keep clueless developers happy by hoarding unused tooling is a step in the wrong direction and leads to expected hand-holding.

I personally don't rely on system versions but lots of people do and that code makes its way everywhere. It's handy to be able to write higher-level code without installing a separate runtime or ensuring it's there...