[brudgers]

Containers provide atomic deploys. Packaged as a single container an application with all its dependencies is either entirely installed as instructed or not installed at all. Deploys don't require building. No compiles. No downloading dependencies. With containers, there are no partial installations (or intermediate states). That's the big deal about containers (imagine an application on 1000's of networked servers big enough that hardware/software/network failures are the norm).

So containers are a way of packaging applications. The big deal about Docker is that it focuses on tooling the individual software developer experience rather than industrial scale sys-ops in data centers. Docker allows developers to test there software in stable environments, more easily. Containers don't get automatic upgrades. They don't vary between my laptop and your laptop. Or more commonly between my laptop today and my laptop tomorrow even though I ran `apt upgrade` (or more importantly, Windows installed updates since Docker even runs on Windows).

[wandering-human]

You can do that would with a single static binary though. At the point it either runs or does not on the system.

How is that problem? Unless I need it to work with an old version. I would want anything I write to work with the latest version of a library, os ect... If it breaks while I am writing it that means I am likely doing something wrong or found a bug in underlying dependency or system.

-edit- I do suppose people develop software with languages that can't be compiled. Although, I see GO developers mention docker.