Actually, I used ALSA without anything else for a long time until recently. I only needed to install pulseaudio because Microsoft Teams didn't work without it and I needed it for work.
I guess modern apps were developed against those APIs that they've become a necessity now?
If you want to keep using alsa with applications that otherwise only work with pulseaudio, you can try apulse[1].
When I used to use it, it worked nicely, but I started using pulseaudio around the time of its most recent release, when I got frustrated by having to tweak asoundrc to use a USB microphone, and being unable to figure out how to bump up its sample rate.
I guess modern apps were developed against those APIs that they've become a necessity now?