Absolutely. It's ok if you're installing Django to run some 3rd party software but if you're actually building something you need to support it's important to have more control over your environment/libraries than the system-level package manager provides. The author gets it right on the Ruby side but their lack of experience on the python side here is showing. Pip and virtualenv are definitely the way to go today. For tomorrow you should keep your eye on the packaging PEP and the Hitchhiker's guide to packaging:
It's confusing but improving quickly. I know it took me quite a while to figure out what the right way to do things in python was.
This is also where rails' conventions help. As good as people say the documentation for Django is, many searches pull up blog posts from 2006 which were right for their time but now are simply outdated. That being said, I think there has been a tremendous boost in Django activity in the past year or so. I feel like they are getting in front of the curve again.
http://guide.python-distribute.org/introduction.html#current...
http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/pep-345-and-386-a...
It's confusing but improving quickly. I know it took me quite a while to figure out what the right way to do things in python was.
This is also where rails' conventions help. As good as people say the documentation for Django is, many searches pull up blog posts from 2006 which were right for their time but now are simply outdated. That being said, I think there has been a tremendous boost in Django activity in the past year or so. I feel like they are getting in front of the curve again.