[Perseids]

You misunderstand. The physicists are developing their own software to analyze their experimental data. They typically have little software development experience, but there is seldom someone more knowledgeable available to support them. Making matters worse, they often are not at all interested in software development and thus also don't invest the time to learn more than the absolute minimum necessary to solve their current problem, even if it could save them a lot of time in the long run. (Even though I find the situation frustration, I can't say I don't relate, given that I feel the same way about LaTeX.)

[aragilar]

Honestly, they should be using conda (if they're working on their laptops) and the cluster package manager otherwise.

[jacquesm]

Conda has slowly but surely gone down the drain as well. It used to be bullet proof but there too you now get absolutely unsolvable circular dependencies.