> I believe a tool like asdf would also achieve this (correct me if I'm wrong).
This is true for very simple applications, where you’re just running `npm ci` or `pip install`, but breaks down as soon as you have sophisticated dependencies with system / library requirements or dependencies (e.g. databases, caches, message brokers, queues) that are beyond the scope of asdf.
Also, since you’re probably deploying containers to production, it’s useful to have a similar environment for local development so that you know what will actually happen in production.
This is true for very simple applications, where you’re just running `npm ci` or `pip install`, but breaks down as soon as you have sophisticated dependencies with system / library requirements or dependencies (e.g. databases, caches, message brokers, queues) that are beyond the scope of asdf.
Also, since you’re probably deploying containers to production, it’s useful to have a similar environment for local development so that you know what will actually happen in production.