1. Perl isn't nearly as broken on Debian as Ruby is. Don't know about the others.

2. These packaging systems were all designed by and for developers. Debian was designed by and for system administrators. The fact that there are common problems is not surpising.

Fair enough re: #2. Given that, it's not at all surprising that the ruby and python folk have done rvm and pip (which, in a faux-spectrum, is a big shift towards what maven et al. provide in the java world).

Of course, it's the debian maintainers' prerogative to structure things such that others generally pick up their toys and go play in their own sandboxes. I just get irritated when I hear people griping about it when it happens, as if system-level package managers have some kind of inherent priority.