I work with a bunch of data scientists and they manage to go about 1.5 years between "I've totally fucked my Python environment and have to burn it down complet

I work with a bunch of data scientists and they manage to go about 1.5 years between "I've totally fucked my Python environment and have to burn it down completely and reinstall it from scratch" events. So yes, I would agree with your statement about Python's packaging system being a ridiculous failure.