For recreational programming purposes (and sometimes professional depending on the domain), they really are a distraction.
The existence of a package manager causes a social problem within the language community of excessive transitive dependencies. It makes it difficult to trust libraries and encourages bad habits.
Much like Rust has memory safety benefits as a result of some choices that make it difficult to work with in some context, lack of a package manager can have benefits that make it difficult to work with in certain contexts.
These are all just tradeoffs and I'm glad "no package manager" languages are still being created because I personally enjoy using them more.
The existence of a package manager causes a social problem within the language community of excessive transitive dependencies. It makes it difficult to trust libraries and encourages bad habits.
Much like Rust has memory safety benefits as a result of some choices that make it difficult to work with in some context, lack of a package manager can have benefits that make it difficult to work with in certain contexts.
These are all just tradeoffs and I'm glad "no package manager" languages are still being created because I personally enjoy using them more.