There's nothing inherently wrong with containers in the abstract: virtualization is a critical tool in computer science (some might it's difficult to define computer science without a virtual machine). There's not even anything wrong with this "less than a new kernel, more than a new libc" neighborhood.

The broken, ugly, malignant thing is this one godawful implementation Docker and its attic-dwelling Quasimodo cousin docker-compose.yml

It's trivial to slot namespaces (or jails if you also like the finer things BSD) into a sane init system, process id regime, network interface regime: its an exercise in choosing good defaults for all the unshare-adjacent parameters.

But a whole generation of SWEs memorized docker jank instead of Unix, and so now people are emotionally invested in it. You run compose to run docker to get Alpine and a node built on musl.

You can just link node to musl. And if you want a chroot or a new tuntap scope? man unshare.