They rarely have a modern enough package to be worthwhile. When you control the package pipeline, you have the ability to dictate how modern or conservative your software is.
The problem is that most programming languages (especially Python and Ruby) are ecosystems unto themselves and often move at a much faster pace than any stable distro (or LTS) could keep up with. That's why we have gems and pip.
Cf. Ubuntu LTS MongoDB default is like 1.2 or something. This is why I switched to using 10gen's repo.
Perhaps, but that's a completely different argument than the one TFA is making.
Besides, in the Ubuntu case anyway, LTS is supposed to be old. The whole point of LTS releases is to let slow-moving institutions/enterprises sit on ancient packages for 3-5 years without having to worry about backporting security updates. If you want recent versions of packages LTS is precisely the wrong place for you to be.
I would disagree with this. LTS (I'm referring to Ubuntu LTS as well as RHEL) is still a good fit because there are 9001 other packages your system relies on for day-to-day operations, and I'd rather mess with those as least often as possible. If you don't use a LTS then you'll have to do whole system upgrades every few years - or else you stop getting security backports. I'd much rather micromanage the dozen highly visible packages that are immediately relevant to my app.
Also, even if you're not on an LTS, doesn't mean you have the latest/greatest available. The python community moves at it's own pace, so there's still a chance that you'll be stuck with the just-before-latest-stable version.
Not entirely, but if your reason to using a non-LTS is to get the latest versions of your stack, then you've just made a really bad choice. As I've said, you're either giving up security updates or are left to test and upgrade your entire system every ~two years in exchange for no guarantee you're on the latest of anything. That tradeoff doesn't make sense no matter what way you look at it.
LTS is the default distro for a lot of server and VPS providers. Often the latest VM images will be rather...unstable, even putting aside the instability of the distro itself.
The problem is that most programming languages (especially Python and Ruby) are ecosystems unto themselves and often move at a much faster pace than any stable distro (or LTS) could keep up with. That's why we have gems and pip.
Cf. Ubuntu LTS MongoDB default is like 1.2 or something. This is why I switched to using 10gen's repo.