It's not an easy task, and when there's already lots of established practices, habits, and opinions, it becomes even more difficult to get around the various pain points. There's been many attempts: pip (the standard) is slow, lacks dependency resolution, and struggles with reproducible builds. Conda is heavy, slow to solve environments, and mixes Python with non-Python dependencies, which makes understanding some setups very complicated. Poetry improves dependency management but is sluggish and adds unnecessary complexity for simple scripts/projects. Pipenv makes things simpler, but also has the same issue of slow resolution and inconsistent lock files. Those are the ones I've used over the years at least.

uv addressed these flaws with speed, solid dependency resolution, and a simple interface that builds on what people are already used to. It unifies virtual environment and package management, supports reproducible builds, and integrates easily with modern workflows.