MacPorts is like FreeBSD ports and Fink is like apt-get. Brew is also dead-easy. While they're not perfect, there are some far more complicated systems in some Linux distros.
The easy'ness of a good linux-distribution is just not possibly with osx.
It is perfectly possible, as in nothing in OS X prevents it. It's just not happening/ed, because, well, not enough OS X users contribute to it, compared to the Debian/Ubuntu community.
Still, it's not that bad. I work with Ruby, Python, Node, C plus various web technologies, and use lots of unix stuff. I seldom have problems installing them with brew.
Also consider the alternative: I can install apps through the App Store or through a DMG image, that no Linux can run today (because they are native Cocoa apps). Stuff like Photoshop and Office, and Premiere, and Aperture, etc. The ease of installing industry standard proprietary apps lots of people need and a large number can't do without, is just not available in Linux.
I use a Mac laptop and would never have written this post. But I don't have to pretend that the package installation setup on OSX is remotely acceptable. It is horrible. Stuff breaks or won't install all the time. On mainstream Linux distros, stuff generally Just Works.
Besides that, package management also offer an easy way to keep your system updated. On a Mac, App Store excepted, there is no central way to keep your system up-to-date - Software Update will update Apple's software (often by downloading huge packages) and you are on your own to update whatever is left. Red Hat and Debian mastered this in the early 2000's.
Also, have you seen any modern, user friendly Linux distros (e.g. Ubunutu)? You never have to dive into the command line there and yet it has nice package management that just works.
Well if you have been to any developer's conference, you'd have deduced that most developers are Apple laptop users.
It's just that they don't bitch about any package that breaks.
Some of us also use a virtual machine like Fusion for an isolated environment if we want to do development with a Linux userland, we don't pile one on top of OS X and its' BSD core, and don't expect a volunteer effort like brew with 2000+ packages all sub 20K people use to work perfectly.
(The guy in the other comments said he manages multiple Macs (a sysadmin guy) and had troubles with installing the same packages to all, etc. Presumably also different OS versions. That's a slightly different problem.)
Looking at the recent StackOverflow survey[1] (I think it's fairly representative of developers in general), we see that about 20% of the respondents used Macs, another 20% used Linux and the rest Windows, so mac users emphatically do not represent "most" developers.
[1]: https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=2RYrV_2bFw2aZ2RfedWH...
But my real point--which I realize was poorly worded--was not that no developers use macs but rather that the ones who do are not "Apple's users" in the sense calloc used.
My Linux systems are always a headache. Last week I pulled a recommended patch from the system updater and it broke Xorg. I had to remove it by hand and reinstall it.
Breaking X is something you expect with Sid. And if you are running it, you re supposed to be able to fix it and submit a patch.
If you are breaking X, you are doing something wrong.
Tangentially that is why I moved to xubuntu from Arch, though I'm sure Arch is a bit nicer with regards to headaches now.
Fedora likes to break frequently though I don't know if packages as big as X are likely to fall through the cracks.
I think this is a great compromise, but it does mean you may have some issues with updates. That said, I have not had any issues on Fedora that weren't my doing.
I've been using Fedora for about a year. Earlier, I used OS X for about the same amount of time and I did have problems that weren't entirely my fault, largely with Java and Eclipse. Since all I was doing during that time was simple Java development for school, there just wasn't anything else that could have gone wrong.