This bothers me as well. Even tasks as simple as adding a repository are now being "improved" with a curl | sudo bash style setup[1].
However, installing from source with make was (and remains) a mess. It may work if you're dedicated to maintaining one application and (part of) its stack. But even then it usually leads to out of date software and tracking versions by hand.
Many people have this weird aversion to doing basic sysadmin stuff with Linux. What makes it weird is that it's really simple. Often easier than figuring out another deploy system.
(The neckbeard in me blames the popularity of OSX on dev machines.)
However, installing from source with make was (and remains) a mess. It may work if you're dedicated to maintaining one application and (part of) its stack. But even then it usually leads to out of date software and tracking versions by hand.
Many people have this weird aversion to doing basic sysadmin stuff with Linux. What makes it weird is that it's really simple. Often easier than figuring out another deploy system.
(The neckbeard in me blames the popularity of OSX on dev machines.)
[1] https://nodesource.com/blog/nodejs-v012-iojs-and-the-nodesou...