Not anymore: https://peps.python.org/pep-0394/
> Distributors may choose to set the behavior of the python
> Avoiding breakage of such third party scripts was the key reason this PEP *used to* recommend that python continue to refer to python2.
Emphasis mine.
It was to precisely avoid this scenario where you get it switched out from under you.
This doesn’t mean every distro followed suite (though most popular ones were good about it) , but the biggest issue is users. Tons of users create the symlink or alias for convenience and then forget about it till stuff breaks.