It's all much better now, especially since pip can (and does) install per-user. Of course, for anything non-trivial, you'd want a virtualenv anyway, and then you're dealing with a single place for all dependencies, and (usually) pinned version numbers.
Comments
I think the Python problem is mostly about
https://xkcd.com/1987/
Which is to say, core Python may be fairly backwards compatible, but once you pip anything, well...
Yep. Yep. Yep.
I once rewrote a Python program into Java just to avoid those problems. 10/10 would do again.
It's all much better now, especially since pip can (and does) install per-user. Of course, for anything non-trivial, you'd want a virtualenv anyway, and then you're dealing with a single place for all dependencies, and (usually) pinned version numbers.
I'm afraid I must disagree: Python packaging is as bad as its ever been; but now with more nuances to trip one up and occasionally work.