Is there a good alternative to Homebrew on macOS yet?

nix is the way!

[nix-shell:~/Lab]$ cat shell.nix
{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:

pkgs.mkShell {

  buildInputs = with pkgs; [
    python3
    poetry
    texlive.combined.scheme-full
  ];

}

I use nix-shell on all my machines across all operating systems

I'm probably naive here but I actually find homebrew to be mostly painless. Sure there is occasional breakage that requires a full reinstall but really it's only been twice in like 8 years

Macports is pretty solid. But it's annoying when you don't find packages you want and have to manually download the binary

Haven’t tried it yet but tea.xyz was created by the founder of Homebrew

Not for everyone, but I like Nix + nix-darwin. I still install some packages and casks through Homebrew, but the config is declarative and managed by Nix. Good intro: https://xyno.space/post/nix-darwin-introduction