I don't really see the big deal--for as long as I've been using Linux, which is over 20 years now, installing many packages requires pulling in dozens of other packages, themselves perhaps composed of multiple libraries... The problem is they come from cargo and not a distro? I get the problem with the language repos being more prone to supply chain attack than distro repos, but i don't really get the impression it was ever normal to build complete apps without dependencies.
The issue is HOW MANY. This simple utility is in the 100-200 range, Zed editor is in 2000+ range. C/C++ software you find in distros is not only stabilized by the unstable/testing queue, which language repos don't have and don't plan to have, but also has 5-10x less dependencies on average.