Old timer here: uv is not the first opinionated tool to manage Python packaging. It is build learning from other tools right and wrongs. I now use uv for everything because its quirks are less disruptive than quirks from previous tools that I also tried and disliked for being a bit too much for a very small gain.
What you call "dumpster fire", I call "steps towards uv", maybe even better tools in the future.
The only major opinionated tools that were in use prior to uv were Conda, Pipenv and Poetry (- ignoring pip here, as it's mainly a package installer). None of them contributed towards PEP 518 (Conda significantly predated it, and Pipenv actively created a competing format even though the PEP already was accepted).
Most of the lessons that make uv good can be directly traced back to Cargo (which in turn can be traced back to Bundler). The main portions from the Python side that helped it have a good foundations were standards work (PEPs), none of which were driven by the people behind any of the three "major" package managers.