It's included in the default install of most desktop/server Linux distros (with plenty of exceptions), but I don't believe any of the BSDs ship it in their base system.
IIRC macOS used to have python 2 in its default install, but I vaguely recall that being deprecated and removed at some point. My only Mac is on the other side of the country at the moment, so I can't check myself.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...
I wonder if that kerfuffle is why they ended up not removing Ruby and Perl yet, despite the same promise. macOS’ Ruby is around 2.6. Perl I somehow doubt they’ll get to, as it’s such an important part of Unix admin I bet they themselves use it somewhere.
There is still a /usr/bin/python3 which is a shim. When you call it, if you don’t have the Xcode Developer Tools you’ll be asked to install them (it’s a non-scary GUI dialog which takes two clicks) and then you’re set. That is also a few versions behind the cutting edge, but it does get updated sometimes.
They also have a habit of sometimes add or change some APIs mid-cycle, so you may see requirements for the latest Xcode being a mid-cycle version of the OS. Or how was it with Mac App Store, that not only itself, but the relevant APIs for programs distributed in it appeared in 10.6.4?
I will never understand this.
But then, I've been using Python 3 since 3.2 and my first reaction to that was a sigh of relief, and by the time I updated to 3.4 I was already wondering why everyone else was lagging behind on the switch.
Perhaps because your interpretation of my comment is wrong.
> was removed in [an OS released on October 25, 2021]
No, no it was not! That would have been fine. Heck, it would even have been fine if they had removed it the year before. Two years. Three. I don’t care. The problem is that it was removed on a point release (not October) without warning, after setting the precedent of removing another language on a major release.
> But then, I've been using Python 3 since 3.2 and my first reaction to that was a sigh of relief
And I don’t even care about Python. But I still had to deal with the fallout from that from things I didn’t write.
My perspective is that the problem is that people were trying to use Python 2 after January 1, 2020. I left it behind years before that.
Edit: Unlike older versions of macOS that came with Python 2.7 pre-installed, newer macOS versions (Catalina and later) no longer include Python pre-installed.
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Library/Frameworks/Python3.framework/
Though for a while there having built in interpreters was great for kids and learners.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44580198
The removal was in Monterey. Catalina and its successor Big Sur very much still had it. Catalina was the one that removed 32-bit support.
you could just take a random person macbook, open the terminal and launch python3 -m http.server 3000 --directory ~
then on the local network you could download all his files
It seems much more likely to me they were just tired of having to manage the languages (and being constantly criticised they were behind) and simply chose to remove them.