I don't use homebrew too much (I'm usually on Linux, and when I am on macos, my development environment tends to be pretty lightweight), but based on my experie

I don't use homebrew too much (I'm usually on Linux, and when I am on macos, my development environment tends to be pretty lightweight), but based on my experience with Linux package managers, I wonder if this is mostly a pain point due to the performance issues brew sometimes has. On Linux, I tend check for upgrades fairly often (at least once a day, and always right before trying to install something), so I don't run into this issue much there. However, with my Linux package manager, checking for updates is always really fast (maybe a second or two at most unless I'm on very spotty wifi), whereas sometimes trying to do the same with brew takes significantly longer (and that's before even applying the updates). It seems plausible that users who are frustrated with slow updates start updating less often, which then causes updates to take even longer the next time they do, until eventually they have an experience like OP where they try to install one thing and it takes 45 minutes. I imagine there isn't an easy solution if this is in fact the core issue, but I think it's worth considering that the core issue isn't actually the update strategy you describe, as that's fairly similar to what I've seen with Linux package managers, and I can't remember ever seeing any complaints like OP's about any of them.