It was the case until very recently. Check constraints are now supported in MySQL 8:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/create-table-check-c...I believe MariaDB added support for them a couple years earlier, but am not certain.
More broadly, I would agree it's a very painful "gotcha" to have aspects of CREATE TABLE be accepted by the parser but ignored by the engine. However, in MySQL's defense, theoretically this type of flexibility does allow third-party storage engines to support these features if the engine's developer wishes.
Ideally, the engine should throw an error if you try using a feature it does not support, but in a few specific cases it does not (at least for InnoDB). This can be very frustrating, for sure. But at least it's documented. And no database is perfect; they all have similarly-frustrating inconsistencies somewhere.
