The approach of Mac ports and Homebrew have been the complete opposite when Homebrew came into existence. Mac ports tried to make packages compatible with whatever Apple shipped, aka their own twists on Perl, python, OpenSSL etc. While Homebrew tried to make macOS compatible with whatever existed out there. As a developer Homebrew gave you a more up to date and fully functional experience. Can’t tell you how it is today since Apple removed all interpreters and such from macOS.