I have never understood the need for all the different tools surrounding Python packaging, development environments, or things like Pipenv. For years, I have used Virtualenv and a script to create a virtual environment in my project folder. It's as simple as a node_modules folder, the confusion around it is puzzling to me.<p>Nowadays, using setuptools to create packages is really easy too, there's a great tutorial on the main Python site. It's not as easy as node.js, sure, but there's tools like Cookiecutter to remove the boilerplate from new packages.<p>requirements.txt files aren't very elegant, but they work well enough.<p>And with docker, all this is is even easier. The python + docker story is really nice.<p>Honestly I just love these basic tools and how they let me do my job without worrying about are they the latest and greatest. My python setup has been stable for years and I am so productive with it.