I actually think it's quite nice to supply a Vagrant VM (or at least the definition and cookbook) to get someone started quickly.

I'm only confused at why installing pip/python isn't done via the chef file also. If you ever wanted to destroy the VM instance it'd be nice to not have to re-run any setup.

This tutorial doesn't require you to learn chef or use it directly in anyway so I don't think that's fair to include on the list of complaints.