Can Python installation be as clean as PHP?

[Rene Pijlman]

Jack:
>I have to run the installer to install dozens of directories and 
>hundreds of files, 

That's not unusual and not considered a problem by most people.

>and I don't really know if all of them are necessary.

Don't let that bother you. Life's too short.

>Plus, lots of libraries are in .py, which is of course not as 
>efficient/clean as having all of the core functions built-in in 
>the C/C++ core, like in PHP.

Performance-critical parts _are_ implemented in C/C++. But not everything
falls into this category. Yes, there's probably room for more performance
improvements. Just like there is with PHP. Did you know, for example, that
PHP doesn't store and re-use compiled versions of the scripts by default?
With PHP you need to fiddle with eAccelerator, Zend and the like. The
Python interpreter does this automatically.

There are advantages to having library code in Python too, such as being
able to seemlessly debug it in a Python debugger. Also, Python API's tend
to be a lot cleaner than PHP's. This probably reflects the language
they're implemented in.

-- 
René Pijlman