Exactly. To get Python running, you need your webserver, some kind of fcgi/wsgi module or interface running in your webserver, specialized configuration for your app in your webserver, Python installed, some enumeration of your app's packages installed, and finally, your application running.
We laugh at PHP as a giant glob of senseless stdlib crap, but for its purpose as a web-facing product, it works. Users almost never have to worry about installing extra libraries or modules. mod_php means that you never worry about whether or not you have mod_proxy and some fcgi wrapper installed. You don't have to worry about process management.
This doesn't make PHP less of a disaster from a purist's standpoint, but I think it's exactly the things that make it a disaster (gigantic stdlib, no real package manager to speak of, single-threaded, designed to run in short-lived processes and then die off, etc) that make it widely accessible as it is.
I still think there are huge issues with PHP as a language, and I'm long past the point where I'd consider it an ideal candidate for web applications development (because I can deploy python and ruby apps with ease now!), but it has wildly succeeded at hiding all the underlying machinery from the user so that Joe Average can just start scripting his webpages.
We laugh at PHP as a giant glob of senseless stdlib crap, but for its purpose as a web-facing product, it works. Users almost never have to worry about installing extra libraries or modules. mod_php means that you never worry about whether or not you have mod_proxy and some fcgi wrapper installed. You don't have to worry about process management.
This doesn't make PHP less of a disaster from a purist's standpoint, but I think it's exactly the things that make it a disaster (gigantic stdlib, no real package manager to speak of, single-threaded, designed to run in short-lived processes and then die off, etc) that make it widely accessible as it is.
I still think there are huge issues with PHP as a language, and I'm long past the point where I'd consider it an ideal candidate for web applications development (because I can deploy python and ruby apps with ease now!), but it has wildly succeeded at hiding all the underlying machinery from the user so that Joe Average can just start scripting his webpages.