I run databases however in Docker on my Mac.
And even if you think setting up a "sane development environment" is simple, it gets much more complicated as you add additional languages and versions of those languages, and their underlying frameworks, etc. For example if you look at NodeJS alone: we have things like nvm to switch between Node release versions because you'll often have different projects relying on different versions of Node. Or you could just use Docker and it's baked in, basically.
What if someone's dev environment requires a running Redis server, PostgreSQL, and MinIO? And what if you need to keep those instances free of cruft from other projects? Hey, you know what works for that? Docker!
Or what if you need to mock several AWS services locally, because you don't want to be paying for actual AWS or polluting other environments while working on something? Hey, you know what works for that? Docker!