You have an increasingly rarefied perspective, and you should hang onto it.
Docker is a treadmill. Docker leads to Docker Compose leads to Kubernetes leads to whatever. It's a lot of noise and motion; you will increasingly encounter engineers who grew up on this stuff and assume it as a prerequisite, and are eager to climb the treadmill, thinking it's a ladder. You know about other options, and can decide when to stop.
Yeah I appreciate this. And since I'm a researcher rather than an engineer I'm also not forced to get on the threadmill. But like I said, I do see some value in using Docker as a tool to let a bunch of researchers run wild as semi-trusted superusers (by "semi-trusted" I mean we can be trusted not to purposefully do evil, but not trusted not to accidentlaly step on each others' fet). So I'd still like to learn a bit :-)
Docker is a treadmill. Docker leads to Docker Compose leads to Kubernetes leads to whatever. It's a lot of noise and motion; you will increasingly encounter engineers who grew up on this stuff and assume it as a prerequisite, and are eager to climb the treadmill, thinking it's a ladder. You know about other options, and can decide when to stop.