This, so much this. I tried to use MacPorts. It was pulling teeth every time. Brew was a It Just Works breath of fresh air.
I agree that it's a very opinionated tool, and note that those opinions fit in well with the Mac ecosystem. They aren't as good a fit for Linux or Windows.
I think often 'it just works' and 'opinionated' goes hand in hand. Without choosing what to say no to, you create infinite workload with finite amounts of people and thus something breaks, somewhere.
Yep, I have to agree. I started using a mac about 11-12 years ago. Homebrew was new. At the time MacPorts was the "defacto" package manager and Homebrew was the "new kid on the block" or "experimental" one.
I started with Macports and it never did what I wanted it to. Packages were broken and it required me to do a lot of stuff that I didn't understand. A friend told me that he had recently done all the same installs on Homebrew and it was easy. So I gave Homebrew a try and the exact same packages installed easily and quickly. Homebrew has only gotten easier to use since then.
Maybe I am just not doing anything complicated enough with Homebrew to run into the issues other people have had, but my experience with Homebrew has been a breeze. I really don't have any complaints. I'd maybe prefer if packages were Python instead of Ruby, but at the end of the day that really doesn't matter.
I agree that it's a very opinionated tool, and note that those opinions fit in well with the Mac ecosystem. They aren't as good a fit for Linux or Windows.