apt is a dependency resolver, and both apt-get and aptitude (an alternative implementation) are good at dependency resolution. Pre-yum (so for RHEL before 2007), there wasn't a good dependency resolver on RHEL. yum and dnf have each improved significantly on this, but it's a lot nicer to get the packages you need and know that they're compatible than to find RPMs and install them and see if things work.

As a consequence, Debian packaging policy is (in my experience) a lot more aggressive about using detailed dependency-resolution metadata to establish constraints and define compatibility, which makes for a more annoying developer experience but a nicer end-user experience.