From why you've said it sounds like maybe the issue was really how they factored out the common code (Python loading base64 encoded Python is clearly insane) rather than the fact that they did.
It's difficult to draw conclusions from these sorts of things though because the answer is "sometimes you should copy and paste a bit, sometimes you shouldn't" and you just have to have skill and taste to know the difference.
It's difficult to draw conclusions from these sorts of things though because the answer is "sometimes you should copy and paste a bit, sometimes you shouldn't" and you just have to have skill and taste to know the difference.