It's 100% realistic because *I've been doing it off-and-on for the last 25 years.*
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.
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.