And then you'd have to deal with wrong glibc versions or mysterious segfaults or undefined behavior or the the code assuming the wrong arch or ...

python solves none of those issues. It just adds a myriad of ways those problems can get to you.

All of a sudden you have people with C problems, who have no idea they're even using compiled dependencies.

In theory you're right, CPython is written in C and it could segfault or display undefined behavior. In practice, you're quite wrong.

It's not really much of a counterargument to say that Python is good enough that you don't have to care what's under the hood, except when it breaks because C suck so badly.

I was specifically talking about python packages using C. You type "pip install" and god knows what's going to happen. It might pull a precompiled wheel, it might just compile and link some C or Fortran code, it might need external dependecies. It might install flawlessly and crash as soon as you try to run it. All bets are off.

I never experienced CPython itself segfault, it's always due to some package.

I actually did a small C project a couple of years ago, the spartan simplicity there can have its own pain too, like having to maintain a Makefile. LOL. It’s swings and roundabouts!

I agree simplicity is king. But you're comparing making a script using dependencies and tooling for those dependencies and a C program with no dependencies. You can download a simple python script and run it directly if it has no dependencies besides stdlib (which is way larger in python). That's why I love using bottle.py by example.

Agree. But even with dependencies running "make" seems to be way simpler than having to install particular version of tools for a project, making venv and then picking versions of dependencies.

The point is the same - we had it simpler and now, with all capabilities for automation, we have it more complex.

Frankly, I suspect most of the efforts now are spent fighting non-essential complexities, like compatibilities, instead of solving the problem at hand. That means we create problems for ourselves faster than removing them.

You can do the same in python if you're not new to programming.