That's not a realistic solution. Nobody is going to stop using their machine for development just to get some security gains, it's way too much of a pain to do that.
When I was developing server software for Windows, the first time I was able to setup a development environment by simply cloning a VM instead of spending a day-and-a-half with a lap full of MSDN CDs/DVDs, I never went back.
Prior to that, I was happily net-booting *BSD/Solaris servers all over my house/apartment.
Nowadays, we have so many tools to make this trivial. Your contention doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny of the available data.
If you are downloading software from untrusted sources (e.g. NPM, pip, and others) and running it on your primary working machine, or personal machine, then you are simply begging for trouble.
Whether or not it’s a good idea, “realistic” implies practicality, which could presumably be measured by whether people find it worthwhile to do the thing.
Aren't you're a bit asking "When X transportation method isn't used by everyone, can it really be any good?" :-)