Docker isn't a project manager, I'm struggling to see the comparison. If you have an app (api/web etc) you would use uv to manage dependencies, lock files and a locam virtual environment for development, and then you could install the same dependencies and the project in a docker image also for deployment.
People certainly use Docker for this purpose. Need a new package? Add a pip install line and rebuild the image.
I agree it isn’t the best use of Docker, but with the hell that is conda (and I say this as someone who likes conda more than most other options) and what can feel like insanity managing python environments, Docker isn’t the worst solution.
All that said, I moved to uv last year and have been loving it.
Yeah, I also used Docker (actually, Podman) as an alternative Python package manager and it worked well enough. Most of all, it felt somewhat cleaner and more reproducible than using plain virtualenv.
