I understand it's meme that operates well outside python - python seems particularly bad due to many packages having system dependencies in addition to package to package dependencies.

I'm just speculating that's it's a self reinforcing pattern - compatibility problems leads to isolated builds, which reduces peoples concern for backwards compatibility, which makes isolated builds ever more important.

Maybe it's fine - a trade off that allows greater velocity of development, it just seems attention to backwards compatibility is becoming a thing of the past.