Also, last time I checked, KDE, which I use, was many releases behind. Also, in Centos6 which had python 2.6.5(IIRC) was a PITA to update. Actually you couldn't so you had to maintain a source-based installation of 2.7.X side by side. In general you ended up having a source distribution, because the repos had really old stuff. For web development stuff, it was really impossible to have it as your main system.

Maybe CentOS 7 is a bit better, but still I don't think you can use it for modern desktop/devel operations.