I don't understand this at all. It's 2018. My dev. env. for <insert thing> is some text editor that knows how to "jump to definition" and "find all usages" (this is sometimes referred to as "IDE"), and a bunch of Dockerfiles to build and run the tests.
Why is being 2018 relevant? Use whatever works for you. Your environment sounds hip and I'm sure you'll move onto whatever fashionable container platform and "some text editor" that is available next, but I prefer finely tuned tools that work for me.
So you're using Docker instead of virtual environments? I feel there is much more overhead with Docker, but I could be wrong. Maybe I need to try it out again!
Overkill - Yes and No. Yes, because you are spinning up a full VM to run a docker container locally. No, because the container is also the container run in prod, with no opportunity for some other process to come along and hose your otherwise clean install.
The process and FS isolation also make sysadmin-me all tingly inside. That way you can't hose up anybody else's clean install either (even if you're compromised).
As a side note, on mac, the VM that runs docker containers requires less ram and CPU than Hipchat. Go figure.
Or you don't want to hose your system python, or you don't want to shit all over any other work you may be doing, or you want to ever test on anything other than a single (probably polluted if you're screwing around using your system python for everything) environment, or you're a professional using python, or if you want to be taken at all seriously....the list goes on! And yeah, using your system python means you're either not doing any professional/serious work or you're a hack who needs to stop doing anything professionally/seriously.
Way to miss the point!...all of them! Nobody said anything about manually installed packages being unsegregated or immutable, so let's not put up any more straw men. It's just a stupid way to work.
I think you may be the one without admin skills if you think working on your system Python is anything except reckless. No one cares that you have 20 years of doing it like that, it's a poor argument and shows up a really bad attitude.
Your appeal to absolutes reeks of immaturity, lack of experience, and cargo-cult reasoning.
On the contrary, if it rarely to never happens compared to the effort involved, it's not "reckless" at all, but a tradeoff. The site package folders are a simple path of files/folders, not hard to reason about. Nothing gets "hosed" without your participation. No need to live in mortal fear. In other words the cure is as bad as the disease.
The truth is that venvs are a hack with a lot fewer use cases now that user packages at the low-end and containers at the mid/high-end are now ubiquitous.
Honestly newbies would be a lot better off just avoiding venvs entirely. I make an exception for pipenv when appropriate since it hides the complexity as well as possible.
