At least it circumvents https://xkcd.com/1987/ to some extent. It sometimes feels like half the [python] questions on Stack Overflow are from persons confused about how and where packages get installed and what Python they are actually running.

It doesn’t circumvent anything, it just adds another place that people can potentially be confused. Now you have your site packages in a Linux file system in a container you need to fiddle with, and so you install your packages there in a virtual env? Do you use cobra? Etc.

Not saying docker isn’t a good solution sometimes, but if you just want to manage local python dev environments venv will get you through it with far less complexity and far less confusion.