But poetry requires pip… you can't use it without using pip

Poetry requires pip in the way that `go mod` requires `go get`, i.e. Poetry allows one to operate at a higher level of abstraction, where it's harder to make mistakes and generally easier to manage your dependency tree.

Abstractions are amazing until they break and you have to fix them.

Sure, this is true for every abstraction: some are more air-tight or leaky than others, but IME Poetry and go mod are fairly solid.

I haven’t had to use pip in a long time. Just like I haven’t had to use `go get` in a while.

I mean it’s not the most rock solid abstraction, but introducing sane package management in an OSS environment with a decade plus of history is very hard. Against that background, they are doing pretty well, IMO.

Kind of. It's intended to be a system package/tool. In that regard you can use, wait for it, yet another python tool - pipx. So instead of installing poetry to a venv or whatever using pip, you can use `pipx run poetry`. Now you have to install pipx...

They clearly mean using pip on its own, presumably by `pip freeze > requirements.txt`