Yet people use daily to manage 10k-100k+ servers/devices.
The term "scaling" has very different meanings depending on context and how one product scales is very different from another.
You could setup a context that favors push vs pull and vice versa, you can also see different products scaling well or not depending on slight variations in context and implementation.
No, all other plugins require to be written in Python (they are imported into the engine), modules are executed externally on the remote and can be in ANY language, scripting or compiled.
I would agree, Ansible is not the best tool to 'remove some files from localhost', a simple scirpt or one line shell command is much faster.
Ansible is designed mostly to do 'remote' work in parallel and with many features that would just be 'overhead' for that scenario.
Ansible was not built for speed, it was built to make automation across many targets simple, auditable and reliable.
If you don't need any of those things, it will appear unwieldy, I would compare this to going through security checks, luggage handling and customs at an airport to cross the street.
FYI, you can build modules (remote execution pliugins) in much more than Python, any scripting language works, even binary modules are supported. I know of group using golang modules for their environment, have not heard of people using rust (yet).
The term "scaling" has very different meanings depending on context and how one product scales is very different from another.
You could setup a context that favors push vs pull and vice versa, you can also see different products scaling well or not depending on slight variations in context and implementation.