Idk how anyone could sustain the impression that pip was not broken unless they had basically never used anything else (including Linux package managers) long enough to have even a basic understanding of it.

And that's a big part of what's so frustrating about Python generally: it seems to be a language used by lots of people who've never used anything else and have an attitude like "why would I ever try anything else"?

Python has a culture where nominal values of user-friendliness, pragmatism, and simplicity often turn into plain old philistinism.