I was using macports before brew really existed and switched over the brew because you didn't have to waste time compiling everything all the time and dealing w

I was using macports before brew really existed and switched over the brew because you didn't have to waste time compiling everything all the time and dealing with breakage. The CLI was also much nicer to use with little bits of whimsy. Brew was a big timesaver back then (maybe now too if macports is still in 'compile everything' mode) and that is the key reason why it became the dominant package manager. Nobody has 'moved back' because macports isn't 'better enough' to induce people to switch over like they did with brew originally.