> but such advice is why so many beginners have painful Python experience
Sample of one, but I never encountered anything even broken in MacPorts. They seem to embrace the BSD ethos of doing everything right (even if at a slower pace, as some packages lag a few releases behind Homebrew).
Macports and homebrew Pythons are dependencies of other packages. They can be used by you, but they are not meant for you.
This means at some point, they will contain a surprise, and not a good one.