> Why do I need a whole new python environment rather than just scoping the dependencies of an application to that application?
But… that’s what a virtualenv is. That’s the whole reason it exists. It lets you run 100 different programs, each with its own different and possibly conflicting dependencies. And yeah, those dependencies are completely isolated from each other.
I think his point is that you could have just had a situation where multiple versions of the same dependency could be installed globally rather than creating a new isolation each time.